Citizen's Police Academy

"Shoot, Don't Shoot!"

At the Plano Citizen's Police Academy, they have a night where they run you through a bunch of scenarios.  You have a real gun, loaded with blanks, you're thrown into a scenario where you're given only a little bit of information, and you have to figure out where the threat is and neutralize it.  The idea is to approximate what our police officers might have to face in making that split decision about whether to use deadly force.

Shooting at the FATS machine, a simulator that pits the Police Academy student against a computer.  That's a Lugar I'm holding, with a laser beam.  They show a DVD type scenario, and I have to shoot the right people at the right time.  If I do it right, they actually fall down dead.  (I didn't do it right--they all ran off and I got killed.)

I don't remember who I was shooting here--probably a cop.

This was the funniest scenario.  It was supposed to be a bar disturbance.  You run in, there's an old man who tells you some people are tearing up his bar.  When you turn toward the disturbance, he pulls a gun--which was sitting there in his lap the whole time--and shoots you.  You're supposed to identify the threat and deal with it--but every single person in the class got shot by the old man.

I'm suited up in a bulletproof vest and police windbreaker.  You can see the paint-ball "bullet holes" from a demonstration they did earlier--not while I was wearing it, thank God.  These aren't like the paint balls at your local gaming place.  These ones really hurt.