Citizen’s Police Academy – Week Nine
Hi friends! Sorry about not posting an entry last week. We got introduced to the SWAT team and while there were a few cool things, I didn’t really find much to photograph.
We spent this week down on the Carmel PD shooting range, which if I had paid attention, I would’ve found it the first time I drove by it. If you’re ever by the wastewater treatment facility on 96th Street and Hazel Dell Parkway, you just might see the range north of that. Surprisingly, it didn’t smell that bad. God must have made the wind blow south instead of north towards us.
We started talking about the different types of force, how it’s used, etc. The rangemaster shot a couple tasers for us to show how it works. I think most of us were excited for the Laser Shot training simulation. Basically you stand in front a screen and a video plays a scenario. Watching the person, you decide when and if it’s the right time to shoot.
My first scenario was kind of a bust. It was a courtroom with a beligerent man not wanting to go back to jail. He shoved the bailiff and came running at me, I shot him three times in the chest cavity. Whoops! Turns out he didn’t have a weapon in this particular simulation… thanks alot Major Barlow! Ha ha!
The second simulation was a bit more difficult, it had me walking through a hallway of a school with multiple shooters… children shooting at me! The version that Carmel PD owns seems like a fairly simple version of the Laser Shot system. They take a Glock and put a laser sight in it, so when you shoot at the screen, it registers where you shot (think of it like a high-tech version of Duck Hunt). I was browsing through YouTube and found this video showing a more advanced version of the software used by the Army….
Well, that pretty sums it up. Next week we’ll be doing simulated stops, so we’ll get to drive a squad car and pull people over, it should be good times… now what did I do with that taser? Ha ha!
FUN FACT: Did you know that there’s a civilian version of the taser gun like the police use? It’s the Taser X26C. In Indiana, it is considered a deadly weapon if a civilian uses it without proper training.