The Los Angeles Police Department Bonus Qualification Course

I recently fired the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Bonus Qualification Course.* The LAPD administers this course of fire as a primary qualification course and as a bonus qualification course. The LAPD began using the bonus course of fire in 1964. Police recruits had to get a certain score on the course to graduate from the police academy. The bonus course is no longer a graduation requirement, but it does serve as a qualification test for officers to demonstrate their marksmanship skills.

The LAPD Bonus Course of Fire uses the LAPD BT5s silhouette target with shooters earning points according to the value of the target’s rings. To achieve a perfect score of 400, a shooter must place 40 rounds inside target's ten rings. Additional rounds in the head above the two required hits are scored as five points.

The course of fire consists of six stages as follows:

Stage One fired at seven yards with both strings starting from the close contact position: at the start signal, fire 4 body shots in 3 seconds (2 on the right target and 2 on the left target). Return to the close contact position. At the second start signal, fire 2 head shots in 1.5 seconds (1 round on each head).

Stage Two fired at seven yards starting from the close contact position: at the start signal, fire 6 body shots in 3.5 seconds (2 on the right target, 2 on the left target, and 2 on the right target).

Stage Three fired at ten yards starting from low ready position. Repeat the stage one strings.

Stage Four fired at ten yards starting from low ready position: at the start signal, fire 2 body shots in 2 seconds (First pair on the left target, second pair on the right target, third pair on the left target). Between each pair of body shots, the shooter must return to a low ready position.

Stage Five fired from seventeen yards starting with a holstered pistol loaded with 4 rounds and with 6 rounds in the spare magazine: at the start signal, draw and fire 10 single body shots in 30 seconds (alternating right target, left target throughout). The shooter will fire 4 rounds and then perform an out-of-battery speed reload with a 6-round magazine. The shooter will continue to fire the last 6 single body shots alternating right target, left target, etc.

Stage Six fired from behind a barricade at twenty-five yards starting with the shooter’s sights aligned on the target and their trigger finger on the trigger. At the start signal fire 2 single body shots in 4 seconds (1 on the right target and 1 on the left target). There are three barricade positions used during this stage (right-hand, right-side of the barricade, left-hand, left-side of the barricade, and a kneeling position firing over the top of the barricade). Shooters receive a separate start signal for each string.

LAPD officers receive marksmanship recognition and pay bonuses as follows:

-- Distinguished Expert: 385-point average over 6 consecutive months will earn an extra $32.00 per pay day

-- Expert: 380-400 points will earn an extra $16.00 per pay day

-- Sharpshooter: 340-379 points will earn an extra $8.00 per pay day

-- Marksman 300-339 points will earn an extra $4.00 per pay day

So how did I do? I fired the course cold with my SIG P365 using Critical Duty equivalent reloads. I scored a 363 which put me in the Sharpshooter qualification band. I fired the course of fire a second time with the same pistol and scored a 376. In both qualifications I failed to fire the second head shot in each string within the allotted 1.50 seconds so I dropped twenty points right off the top for each qualification.

My targets

All the times seemed reasonable and some were quite generous with one exception. The extension to fire and transitions associated with two head shots in 1.5 seconds is really moving. Although my head shots were in the head’s ten ring, total time for my head shots were right at two seconds for each qualification. Contrast this time with the thirty second time limit for the seventeen-yard stage of 4 reload 6 which seemed excessive to me. I performed seventeen-yard stage in well under 15 seconds for both qualifications and scored the full ten points for each shot.

Of the thousands of officers who have shot the course in the decades since its inception, only 41 had achieved a perfect score until January 2022, when Officer Justice Huynh became the 42nd using a Staccato P becoming a member of the LAPD’s elite “400 Club.”

Officer Justice Huynh and His Perfect 400 Targets

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* Los Angeles Police Department Stand Alone 7– LD 35 Firearms Session No. 40 – Intro to the LAPD Bonus Course, Version 6.0 dated 9/29/2015 with an LAPD review on 10/01/2019