A report by the Gainesville city auditor's office that surveyed at least a third of Gainesville’s police officers shows at least 65 cops don’t believe — or don’t know if — their fellow officers are adequately trained to use force in the field.

The report also found that six (or 2 percent) of the department’s sworn officers had no documentation in 2016 for "use-of-force" training, a requirement of all officers.

GPD has 307 sworn officers in the field and another 90 personnel working in operations and investigations.

The City Auditor’s Office sent a questionnaire to all officers and logged their responses anonymously. City Auditor Carlos Holt surveyed 122 officers and held 24 in-person interviews to assess whether the department’s use-of-force policy is clear and being followed. The city commission will be briefed on the report at its meeting on Thursday.

Police Chief Tony Jones said Thursday in a statement that most officers are confident with their use-of-force training and that the department takes it seriously.

"A simple survey doesn’t offer enough information to determine why the percentage of officers feel their fellow officers aren’t adequately trained or are unsure that their fellow officers are trained," Jones said. "Our training staff is currently in the process of our annual Use-of-Force training for in-service and we are trying to determine in these classes why some officers apparently feel that others aren’t adequately trained."

Under state law, sworn officers, who are acting in their official capacity, may use force necessary to accomplish “a lawful objective,” the report said. Use of force is any effort required by police to ensure compliance of an unwilling subject. GPD spokesman Ben Tobias said in an email that discharging a weapon, applying force with a weapon, or an intentional strike that causes injury or death is considered use of force.

Jones said officers used force in just 0.3 percent of GPD calls in 2016. In 97 percent of those cases, he said, GPD officers used force because the suspect was either resistant or aggressive.

The report found that GPD’s use-of-force policy is clear and largely being followed, and that a majority of officers in the streets are trained to use force when necessary.

However, 2 percent of GPD officers had not received the required training during 2016, the report found. Under city and state policy, no sworn officer is allowed to perform in the capacity of an officer until the training is completed. Officers are also required to take retraining.

At least 85 percent of the GPD officers surveyed said a “shoot or don’t” simulator — that is supposed to be available for officers — isn’t utilized as much as they would like and often is unavailable.

The video game-like simulation includes a person with a gun at a school and a bank robbery. The screen is projected on a wall and an officer uses an orange fake gun throughout the simulation. The system then gauges the officer’s decision making.

At least 25 percent of officers said they have never used the simulator and 43 percent said they have only used it once in the last two years, the report found.

Tobias said the department is looking to use the simulator more often.

At least 89 percent of officers said they are adequately trained to protect others using force — including deadly force — if needed. About 94 percent said they are trained to provide medical care.

However, 31 percent of officers surveyed said their fellow officers aren’t qualified to use force and an another 23 percent said they are unsure if fellow officers are.

The report found that a majority of officers had not been involved in a situation where deadly force was used. Most felt satisfied with the tools provided on their utility belts, but some said they would like to get rid of their baton.

“For GPD, the TASER has become the go-to tool since it provides for an effective stopping device; however, some reported that the TASER did not work as expected and the officer had to quickly improvise to secure the situation,” the report said.

Officers felt their training is “very good,” but some said they are receiving less training than they used to and that firearms training is not given enough, the report found.

“Some officers are concerned that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is becoming popular with the public,” the report said, “but GPD is not teaching tactics to counteract this.”

Tobias said GPD's training staff is exploring MMA training.

"It’s unfortunately not as easy as simply teaching a new “move” or technique," he said. "The methods and tactics we use must be legally and medically sound and it does take some time to introduce new techniques in an official capacity. Our training staff does introduce our officers to the current threats."

The city auditor made several recommendations for GPD, among them:

• Create a process where officers can access the simulator at any time of day.

• Have GPD's information technologies department run a query to identify delinquencies after each training class.

• Schedule make-up classes as needed throughout the year.

• Create a procedure for ranking use-of-force techniques for reporting purposes.

City commissioners are expected to discuss the report during the first part of the meeting, which starts at 1 p.m. Thursday.

Mayor Lauren Poe said that if the report finds that officers said they need more training in use of force, then it is good to know.

"Use of force has got to be something that is so rarely used that we're shocked when it is used," he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Caplan at andrew.caplan@gvillesun.com or on Twitter @AACaplan.