Less Lethal Options
A Tool Does Not Make the Decision
Less lethal tools may expand the options available to public-safety personnel, but the existence of an option does not answer whether, when, or how it should be used.
Personnel must evaluate the subject's conduct, threat, resistance, environment, distance, available alternatives, target area, foreseeable risks, vulnerable conditions, and what must happen immediately after deployment.
Shield's approach focuses on the entire decision process: authorization, deployment, force justification, post-deployment care, reporting, supervisory review, policy, training, and organizational learning.
Force Options Require More Than Equipment Training
The Question Is Not Simply Whether the Tool Was Authorized
A less lethal option may be authorized by policy and still be a poor choice under the circumstances. Conversely, a tool associated with significant risk may be reasonable when the threat and available alternatives justify its use.
Sound training therefore examines the decision in context: what the subject was doing, what officers knew, what options were available, what risks accompanied deployment, and what objective personnel were trying to accomplish.
This same framework helps supervisors move beyond asking only whether a device was used “within policy” and toward evaluating the quality of the underlying decision.
Medical Response Is Part of the Force Event
Less lethal does not mean risk free. Personnel and supervisors should understand post-deployment assessment, injury recognition, monitoring, decontamination where applicable, positional concerns, changing medical conditions, escalation to healthcare providers, and documentation of care.
Less Lethal Deployment Requires Meaningful Review
Supervisors should evaluate more than whether the employee was certified and the device appeared on an approved equipment list.
Meaningful review should examine the force justification, selection of the particular option, deployment technique, subject response, repeated applications, medical care, evidence, reporting, policy, and whether the event identifies an individual or organizational training issue.
Command staff should also examine patterns involving device use, injuries, repeated applications, deployment by particular units or personnel, and differences between policy and actual field practice.
Built Around the Options Your Personnel Actually Carry
Less lethal programs are most useful when they reflect the agency's equipment, policy, deployment practices, operational environment, medical protocols, reporting requirements, and supervisory expectations.
Shield can build training for patrol, corrections, instructors, supervisors, command personnel, investigators, or mixed groups.
Continue Exploring
Less Lethal Training FAQs
Does Shield provide device-specific certification training?
Can training address conducted-energy weapons?
Can Shield provide training on restraint chairs?
Is the training appropriate for corrections?
Can Shield review our policy as part of agency training?
Can multiple agencies participate in the same program?
Less lethal is an option—not an outcome.
Shield can help your agency strengthen deployment decisions, policy, medical response, reporting, supervision, and risk management around the force options personnel actually use.