One important lesson from all this is that when you’re really going at it with somebody one-on-one, it does not take much time at all to become completely exhausted. I’m not sure how long it took me to completely subdue my suspect, but I’m pretty certain it was not more than 60 seconds (way too long–while proned out on the ground with me kneeling on his head, he was keeping his hands under him against my commands and I had a terrible time finding the right spots to apply some pain compliance techniques as he wriggled around), and I was well on my way to total exhaustion. Fortunately by that time I was able to find the magic spot to make his arms shoot out to the sides (incidentally, I found it with my knee–the one on his head–instead of my knuckles) and the fight was over.

Yesterday afternoon we had a grisly session of Investigative Techniques, in which I saw some truly horrible pictures. I shant darken the light of day with any detailed descriptions. Let’s just say that they were the first ones to make me feel pretty queasy and they involved a Ka-Bar fighting knife, a butcher’s cleaver, some internal organs, and a copious amount of stabbing and slashing upon an unfortunate murder victim. It reinforced the idea that a knife is truly a deadly weapon–some people find it disproportionate and inappropriate if the police fire their guns at somebody charging them with a knife, since “he only had a knife!” Those sorts of people need to see the results of what a “mere knife” can do. On top of that, the soft body armor worn by most police officers does not effectively protect the user against knife attacks.

There were some other pictures, too, since we were covering the topic of all kinds of death–accidents, suicides, and so forth–and about that I’ll just say that there are some truly sick people out there. Oh, and also some truly dedicated ones. One picture involved a suicide by hanging in which a male in his early twenties had hanged himself with his feet nearly flat on the ground. That takes some willpower!

In Firearms on Tuesday we began learning how to effectively use cover and how to shoot from three different kneeling stances. We also conducted some close-in combat shooting practice, teaching us to focus on the target instead of the gunsights at close range. We also practiced delivering multiple shots in quick succession (such as a “hammer”, two shots fired in rapid succession within the same recoil sequence), and when to transition from hammers to “controlled pairs” at longer ranges (involving actually finding the front sight again after each shot). All of these were fired at targets that simply had a cutout hole in the center instead of a ten ring, the objective being to put all shots through the hole. If you’ve never done it before, it is actually surprisingly easy at close range to put your shots in the ten ring without ever looking at your sights, if you have a good shooting stance.

Yesterday was DT again, and we began conducting “active arrest drills”. In these drills, one student is designated the bad guy all suited up in protective gear and another student acts as the officer. The bad guy receives some secret instructions from the instructor on how he should behave, and the good guy receives one simple instruction: “the bad guy has an arrest warrant. Arrest him.” Some bad guys were mostly compliant, whereas others were instructed to actively resist or become assaultive, and the officer had to quickly decide what level of force was appropriate and then successfully execute it to get the bad guy into a prone cuffing position. The drills were very helpful at applying the concepts we’ve learned in a slightly less “sterile” environment than doing simple practice repetitions. However, as a result of drills like this and Monday’s all-out wrestling, we have two students on limited participation due to injuries and another female student (one of three) whose neck has been sore for the past two days because of a particularly brutal hair takedown executed by one of the other female officers. (If I were a female in police academy, I can tell you right now that I’d shave my hair and buy a wig just to avoid having 27 other students practice hair takedowns on me. But that’s just me.)

Also yesterday we had four hours of “Interviewing and Interrogation”, which is going to be way too short (ten hours total). We had four more hours of it this morning, and it is a fascinating and extremely applicable class. The main goal is teaching us how to appropriately interview people, and how to transition to an interrogation when appropriate and secure a confession from a guilty suspect. I can tell right now that after some practice, this arena is going to be one of my favorite parts of the job. I had written up a couple of paragraphs describing some more detail about what we learned and what we’re allowed to do, but then I realized that some of it is probably best kept out of the wrong hands, so I deleted it. If you know me personally, ask me sometime, because it’s fairly amusing.

Before I move on to this afternoon’s activities, I should mention that this morning started off with a possible gas leak in the training facility, so we spent time outside in the freezing cold practicing handcuffing procedures. Management alerted the appropriate authorities (the Real Heroes and the utility company) to investigate the situation. It should be noted that the Avista utility truck arrived before the Real Heroes (who live approx. 1.5 miles down the road). *golf clap* The TAC Officer had a good time mocking them this afternoon by doing a credible impression of one of them stumbling out of the fire truck while rubbing sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles. On a completely unrelated note, I learned last week (or the week before) that the Real Heroes’ motto is “Sleep until you’re hungry and eat until you’re sleepy.” I’m not entirely sure why I’m a police officer instead of a firefighter.

Moving on to this afternoon brought us back to the firearms range for four hours, where we did one-handed shooting drills for half the time. The other half of the time was spent practicing close-in shooting at grappling range with a subject exhibiting a lethal threat–i.e. while interviewing someone, he suddenly lunges forward and pulls a knife or gun on you. This type of shooting requires special practice because you’re actually firing your weapon in mid-draw just after it’s cleared the holster and rocked forward. In this position the muzzle is still parallel to or even slightly behind the position of your head, since you’re leaned forward in a fighting stance, and therefore you feel a significant shockwave from the muzzle blast when firing, which can be surprising and a little disorienting or disconcerting if you’re not ready for it. We spent a couple of hours drilling in this situation, during which I picked up on my favorite firearms-instructor-phrase thus far, referring to the number of rounds to be fired during the drill: “Two’s not enough, and four might be too many, so let’s do three.” Works for me. I can think of all sorts of situations where this saying might apply, the most ready-to-hand being “number of beers to consume after a hard day of PT/DT.” (Yes, alcohol is still prohibited here at the apartments and I’m far too much of a tightwad to go buy it at a bar or restaurant.)

The other good saying to know for all things firearms-related, should you wish to know it, is “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

And if that’s not enough pithy wisdom, then take this closely-related one: “You can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight.”

Anyway, we managed to get through the close-in firing drills without shooting ourselves or anyone else around us, so the day’s a success.

Tomorrow we’ve got more PT, more active arrest drills in DT, possibly some boxing (oof), some Criminal Procedures, Report Writing, and Investigative Techniques, and then it’s the weekend. Hopefully I get to that weekend without contracting strep from the fellow who was absent yesterday due to this very condition. The cold I’ve got is enough for me.

The PT was followed up, as always, by DT, wherein we continued practicing kicks and then had 20-second “freeform” all-out wrestling with a partner. Staying on our knees, the only goal was to get our opponent to the ground. After 5 or 6 or 7 consecutive bouts of this (I lost track) everyone was both drenched in sweat and profoundly exhausted.

We then had four hours of Criminal Procedures (a class I am fond of and which I discovered, to my dismay, is almost over) and two hours of Investigative Procedures (I class I am not fond of and which I discovered, again to my dismay, that 14 classroom hours remain plus 14 more of mock scenes). The latter involved gruesome pictures of dead bodies as we learned about algor mortis, rigor mortis, lividity, putrefaction, and the various stages of bodily decay (which set in rather more quickly than one might imagine). One (caucasian) body had been dead and cooking for about three weeks and was all bloated and nearly completely black from putrefaction, with the nose all sunk into the face and unrecognizable. There were some thoroughly icky stories connected to the dead bodies, but I’ll spare you. The rest of the class was as dry as usual.

Today looks to be better, with four hours of Radio Procedures followed by four hours of Firearms.

Homework hasn’t been too bad lately, so I’ve been studying my notes and working on my uniform while watching a season of 24 that one of my roommates brought up (the fourth season). I’d never seen 24 before, but I’m afraid that now I’m going to have to get a Blockbuster subscription after I get out of this academy so that Mystie and I can watch it all. Curses!

The first point of fact is that CPS cannot simply walk in and take away children without first securing a warrant. The only people who have that authority is law enforcement officers, and the instructor was very particular to emphasize how carefully we must exercise that authority. There are definitely cases where this authority is necessary and good–one example given was a call that the instructor responded to, wherein children were living with their drug-addicted parents. The parents had been failing to pay their utility bills, and the sewer had been shut off. They also kept animals in the house, and there were “deer trails” through the piles of animal refuse. When officers entered the home, a three-year-old child–wearing a sagging and saturated diaper–was sitting on the floor holding a piece of cat feces. He and the five-year-old child, both starving for lack of food, had been eating the feces to stay alive. The toilet was filled and overflowing with human waste, and the parents had taught the five-year-old to go out in the back yard and dig a hole as a latrine, covering his refuse again afterward. This is a perfect example of when children should be removed from their parents immediately, and in my mind it justifies granting law enforcement the authority to remove children under such dire circumstances.

Getting back to the everyday world of ordinary concerned parents, there remains the fear that either CPS will obtain a warrant or that the police will come take away your kids just because you spank them. I am now convinced that this is most certainly not the case, based upon the fact that the state actually encourages corporal discipline in RCW 9A.16.100. That statute is intended to define what types of force are presumed unreasonable, but it begins by stating (emphasis mine):

It is the policy of this state to protect children from assault and abuse and to encourage parents, teachers, and their authorized agents to use methods of correction and restraint of children that are not dangerous to the children. However, the physical discipline of a child is not unlawful when it is reasonable and moderate and is inflicted by a parent, teacher, or guardian for purposes of restraining or correcting the child. Any use of force on a child by any other person is unlawful unless it is reasonable and moderate and is authorized in advance by the child’s parent or guardian for purposes of restraining or correcting the child.

Not only is it lawful to use reasonable and moderate force on your children for the purpose of restraint and correction, but the state is encouraging you to do it. This ought to be heartening right off the bat, but we can take a look at the rest of the statute, which defines the things “presumed unreasonable”, to make sure. Six things are prohibited. The first five are very much no-brainers for any reasonable parent–you can’t kick your child, cut him, burn him, strike him with a closed fist, suffocate him, shake him (if he’s under three), or threaten him with a deadly weapon. It’s the last item that raises doubt in people’s minds: “doing any other act that is likely to cause and which does cause bodily harm greater than transient pain or minor temporary marks.” But what is force that causes transient pain or minor temporary marks? It’s called “spanking”. There is some moderately vague language here–what exactly falls under “transient pain” or “minor temporary marks”?

Clearly this may vary slightly throughout the state based on your prosecutors and judges, but generally speaking our instructor indicated that a typical open-palm spanking on a child’s butt is completely acceptable. You can leave red marks (the kind that disappear in 15-30 minutes), and you might even have the shape of a hand in those red marks, but those are minor temporary marks, not the sort of thing that will be hanging around 8 hours later or something. She did say that where you need to start being more careful is when you use an item of some sort to strike the child. Although I personally always just use an open palm in disciplining our children, in my view there are still many reasonable items (e.g. a plastic spatula) that result in essentially the same effect as a skillfully-wielded open palm. However, I can see how (depending on the item used and who used it) this could start walking further into the “grey area” of that sixth clause.

The bottom line is that the panicky folks who claim the state is banning all spanking or that the CPS will march in and take away your kids for no reason can chill out and relax. (”Until they change the law! Which is their next move! Why, even now the legislature is debating bill number…uh…I can’t remember the number, but they’re going to ban spanking! Dun-dun-dunnnnn!”)

On Monday after PT/DT (involving more “Level 2″ strikes to be used against assaultive non-compliant suspects), we took our third block exam. I managed to score the best grade in the class (97%) and have been catching no end of grief about it (in a good-natured sort of way) from classmates. Aside from that, this week we’ve focused on two primary classes, Criminal Procedures and Investigative Procedures. The former is fairly engaging, as it covers legal topics such as when we are permitted to search people (and to what extent), what sorts of evidence will (and will not) be admissible in court, the definitions of “seizure”, “custody”, and “formal arrest”, when we are required to read miranda rights to a suspect, and so forth. We’re currently covering search warrants in great detail, and we’ve completed the paperwork for two of them based on video scenarios.

Investigative Procedures, on the other hand, is of somewhat questionable value. Thus far it has been primarily concerned with outlining information that we don’t really need to know as patrol officers. These are dry facts about how to conduct a criminal investigation that a detective needs to know but that we will rarely if ever deal with. For example, this afternoon we spent an hour or so talking about the hojillion different ways in which blood can arrive on any given surface–high-velocity spatters, low-velocity spatters, medium-velocity spatters, smears, swipes, transfers, cast-offs, and so on and so forth. Certainly there were some pretty gory photos to accompany all this instruction, but ultimately the instructor pointed out that in his 9 years of experience on patrol, he’s really only ever needed to be able to clearly articulate where he saw blood and roughly how it appeared. It’s the detectives’ job to figure out whether a particular spatter of blood was the result of being flung off a baseball bat in mid-swing or whether it was the victim flailing his arm around or what.

Anyway.

The class does have virtues, such as explaining how to manage a crime scene perimeter and preserve evidence properly, but it is frightfully dry nevertheless. I’m not sure how many hours of it we have, but I think there are a lot.

Yesterday we were on the firearms range for all four hours of the afternoon. I’m shooting decently but not outstanding…ly. We’ve begun shooting the timed qualification course on a regular basis (we shot through it three times yesterday) and I almost always qualify, but I do not shoot nearly as well as I should be able to. Part of the problem is that on the weekends it only takes perhaps 10 minutes to run through 50 rounds (if I’m shooting slowly), but those 50 rounds cost around $13. Becoming a marksman is not cheap! However, I’m probably not going to focus heavily on precision shooting, because that’s not where the vast majority of gunfights take place. I’ll be more interested in honing my skills once we get to our “active shooter” drills, which involve more tactical, dynamic, close-in gunfighting instead of casually standing 25 yards off plinking away at a target.

And so we come to today. Today we had more PT/DT, during which I got an extra good workout by volunteering to be a “road guard”, one of the folks who breaks out of formation, sprints ahead and block off side roads as the formation runs past, then sprints back to the front of formation until the next intersection. We ran through perhaps 2-3 miles of residential neighborhoods full of intersections (plus the mile of straight road to get there) this morning and I think I earned my pay. Afterward we showered and changed into BDUs as usual, where I discovered that I had left my tactical boots back at the apartment–15 to 20 minutes away from the academy. Rats.

I chose to wear my black socks back to the classroom, and nobody noticed (apart from those I carpooled with, who were in the know about this tragedy), but I reported it to the class leader anyway, who reported it to the TAC officer, who in turn ordered me to wear my PT shoes until he conducted an apartment inspection later in the day and would pick up my boots for me then. Once I put on my bright white and orange running shoes, of course, everyone noticed. Turns out that white and orange tennies don’t go well with dark blue BDUs. So I walked around for most of the day looking like a mental defective, but that’s ok. I was surprised that there was no discipline meted out on the spot–usually it’s in the form of having to write a student memorandum or perform a 3-minute “PSA” of your choice in front of the class–but I’ve prepared a PSA anyway, just in case the TAC officer expects it, and also because I deserve it–particularly since today just happened to be the day that class pictures were taken. It would have been a hideous fate indeed to be standing in my class-A KPD uniform with running shoes on, but fortunately by the time we had to change my boots had arrived and everything was copacetic once more. It felt good both to have boots and also to be in an official uniform with a badge on instead of academy BDUs, even if the official uniform is made of 100% wool.

Incidentally, the class picture was taken care of much more quickly than I expected, which was good since it was outside of normal working hours and also since I didn’t order one and therefore couldn’t really care less about it.

To top off the day, late in the afternoon as we were struggling through our 4-hour block of Investigative Techniques, the instructor mistakenly thought I was asleep there in the back row because I was gazing down at my notes and playing with my mechanical pencil while he told a story. According to another officer I did look like I was asleep because my eyes were looking downward, but in truth I was far from it. (Though I was certainly wishing to be sleeping…) I doubt the instructor will mention it to anyone who could issue discipline for it (and if he did, I would protest my innocence vehemently), but the mistaken interpretation was demoralizing for all that.

And now you’re all up to date. Tomorrow we have more PT/DT (and Friday!), some Community-Oriented Policing, and four more hours of Firearms. And I guarantee you that I will have my boots with me.

The budding moviemaker also took some footage of the night pursuit, but it’s a massive file. I’m working on getting that hammered out and online.

Oh, and one more word on OC spray that I forgot to mention yesterday: it absolutely makes you belch like crazy while you’re recovering. *shrug*

The day started off in a typical fashion, with PT/DT and some Criminal Procedures. Then after lunch we began a two-hour classroom session on OC-10, during which we learned that “98% of the OC experience is mental, but that is in no way denying that the other 2% really sucks.” Evidently you can, through sheer force of will, overcome the effects of OC and fight through it. I believe this, but having now experienced the thing, I also believe that actually doing so is outrageously difficult.

We learned about the way in which OC spray “hotness” is measured–using Scoville Heat Units (SHUs). For reference, your typical green bell pepper has 0 SHU–not hot at all. A jalapeño pepper has about 5,000 SHU. The spray that most agencies use is rated at 320,000 SHU. The fogger spray that KPD uses, and which I was sprayed with, is rated at two million SHU. Not fun times! The instructor pointed out that really, at some point “hot” is “hot” and the additional SHU just make decontamination more difficult and the effects last longer. I believe this, as me and the other KPD officer who got the fogger took considerably longer to recover than most other officers.

Our procedure went like this:

1. An instructor and your student partner take up position about 7-10 feet away and prepare to spray you. (Two canisters are used simultaneously to ensure that if one fails or runs dry, sufficient spray is administered so that you don’t have to go through and do it again later.)
2. The instructor counts down from 3. When he reaches zero, you open your eyes and both people give you a 1-2 second burst in the face/eyes.
3. Proceed to a “bad guy” holding a punching bag and deliver 5 palm strikes.
4. Proceed to bad guy #2 and deliver 5 elbow strikes.
5. Proceed to bad guy #3 and deliver 5 knee strikes.
6. Approach a compliant suspect and, using verbal commands, get him into prone cuffing position and cuff him.

There are two main types of OC spray delivery systems, stream and fog. Most people got the stream, which is a solid stream of liquid you can aim. I got the fog, which deploys a burst of fog/mist full of OC nastiness in the general direction you’re pointing. I’m not sure which is worse (and I don’t plan on going back to see what the stream is like). I’m told that some people experience a delay before the burning begins (up to 5-10 seconds in some cases), but not so with me. The first sensation of the liquid landing on my face/eyes was that someone had tossed a blanket full of needles into my face. The next sensation was somebody lighting the blanket on fire and starting to pound on it with a blunt object. If you’re not prepared for it (which hopefully I now am, having experienced it, but wasn’t at the start of today), it literally takes your breath away as your airways try to constrict to keep it out of your lungs. Or rather that’s what it feels like–apparently medical studies have been done on a bunch of idiots who volunteered to get sprayed, and they determined that you get the same amount of oxygen after being sprayed no matter how it feels.

I didn’t have trouble delivering the necessary strikes, but by the time I got to prone cuffing the flames were roaring, I could barely get my eyes open, and my voice was almost totally gone. I did my best to squeak/retch out the commands to get the bad guy onto the ground and managed to cuff him, after which I proceeded to the real pain: decontamination with baby shampoo and a very cold garden hose. Things aren’t too bad while you’ve got water running over you, but the problem is that the OC solution is actually activated by water, so as soon as you stop rinsing the burning sensation returns in full force. The only way to get past it is to tough it out for 5-10 minutes, which I began doing, but then someone pointed out that I failed to rinse off the spray completely (the fog spray was helpfully marked with orange dye), so I had to go back and do another rinsing session (which felt great) and another burn session (which felt awful). Throughout the decon process I saw more snot come out of my nose and mouth than I think I’ve ever seen before in one place.

The closest thing I can think of to describe the feeling while standing waiting for the OC to wear off is one that I’ve read elsewhere: imagine holding your face over a gas grill with the burners turned up. This is a fairly accurate description, provided you put your face down close to the meat and not up high away from the heat. We’re talking serious, foot-stomping, mental-cursing pain here.

After about half an hour I could walk around with my eyes pretty much always open, and the burn had subsided to feel merely like the worst sunburn I’ve ever had. And then we had to go inside, out of the nice cool wind, at which point the gas grill sensation returned. (68 degrees never felt to freakishly hot!)

Over time the burning subsided further to the point that even indoors it only felt like the world’s worst sunburn. And then I got home and had to wash out my hair, head, and neck more thoroughly, at which time the water re-activated the spray and I enjoyed another (albeit slightly less potent) burn phase. One more shower after that and I got most of it out; I now only feel mild burning in my eyes and on my wrists when they get wet.

The bottom line is that while I intend to carry OC-10 on my belt, I’m sure not going to be eager to use it, particularly since the fogger goes all over the dang place. That is some nasty stuff.

Hopefully this was the most unpleasant part of academy, and now it’s over. Certainly this experience has become my new benchmark for all things extremely painful. Also, I think a glamour shot may be forthcoming; I know that at least one or two were taken of me during decontamination.

The conversation became more interesting. According to Stanley (as his name turned out to be), he was from Pennsylvania and had just finished serving a 60-month prison sentence. (He didn’t tell me what for.) He continued on to proclaim that “if he wanted to” he could make plenty of money working because he was a railroad worker. But his wife wanted to go to Arizona, see. This stellar piece of logic was apparently supposed to convince people that he deserved to get their money for free instead of becoming a productive member of society and earning his own keep.

But if this wasn’t enough to convince you to give the worthy man all of your available cash and bless his noble journey, I’ll tell you the real kicker, the first thing I noticed as soon as he began talking: his eyes were glassy, he reeked of alcohol, and he was actually holding a coffee mug full of beer in his hand the entire time he was talking to me. But I’m sure if I’d given him cash, he would have used it to buy gas and get his wife to Arizona.

This all happened on Monday after classes and I hadn’t yet been back to the apartment, so the car was still full of my stuff–including my uniform and a hat emblazoned with a police emblem sitting in plain view. (We don’t wear any “identifiable” parts of the uniform when we’re out in public; though anyone who’s mildly attentive could certainly pick up clues from the “unidentifiable” parts that are acceptable to wear–including boots and navy BDU pants.) I kept waiting with great anticipation for the moment when he realized that he was drunkenly babbling and begging for cash from a police officer, but to my disappointment he never did, and we parted ways–he none the wiser (and none the richer), me edified by his stirring story.

It boggles my mind that some people actually hand out money to these parasites.

The course was fun, but there was a lot of standing around setting up cones as opposed to actual driving. Each lap took anywhere from 3:30 to 3:50 to complete, so my actual time on the course was only about 35-40 minutes out of the six hours on the course (two additional hours were spent on the braking exercise and low-speed skills course), and some of that was just riding with an instructor. All the rest of the time was spent standing at an assigned exercise somewhere on the course, setting up cones knocked over by other students. Overall it was a good experience, but it was very tiring. This week had no PT/DT scheduled, so it was my intention to keep some semblance of physical activity so that I won’t be killed come our next PT session on Monday. This past Monday I managed a solid run (including a murderous hill) and pushups, but I did almost nothing else the entire week. By the time we arrived home each day I was pretty much a spent force as far as physical activity was concerned. The coming Monday may not be pleasant. Actually, I know it won’t be pleasant, but more on that later.

Thursday was night driving. We started out on the course at 15:00 with a few more daytime laps (during which the last non-passing student managed to squeak by on the evaluations at the last hour), “lunch” at 18:30, then a nighttime pursuit. As soon as darkness fell and all the administrative details had been wrapped up (by which time it was about 19:45), each student got the opportunity to conduct a pursuit. After advising the dispatcher that I was in-service, he sent me to a particular location to look for a stolen vehicle. After I initiated a traffic stop, the suspect vehicle pulled over momentarily but then took off and the pursuit began. The suspect vehicle was allowed to drive wherever he wanted on the course, but we had to obey each exercise. We also had to communicate constantly with dispatch, advising our current location, direction, speed, traffic conditions, road conditions, and all observations of the suspect vehicle–from vehicle description to any traffic violations committed. The goal was to practice remaining calm and intelligible over the radio and maintain good driving habits despite the distractions of emergency lights, sirens, adrenaline, and the dispatcher. (Late in the pursuit: “Adam 112, how many rounds do you carry on your duty belt?” Dash it all… I had difficulty remembering how many rounds each of my magazines even carried. I think I guessed 17, but it’s actually 15. “17 times 3 plus 1!” So the evil dispatcher replied, “And how many is that?” *pause* You might be surprised at how difficult it is to complete simple math problems while swerving through cones and hairpin turns at night with the lights and sirens going. I lacked even sufficient presence of mind to reply, “Enough, that’s how many!” Or, more to the point at that particular moment, “None! My current duty weapon is made out of solid mold-injected plastic and fires phantasmic rounds, of which I have an unlimited supply!” The instructor riding in the passenger seat bailed me out, but he couldn’t do math either. “Fifty-three.” Then, after I’d told the dispatcher–who was probably laughing at me–my ride-along instructor apologized and corrected himself–”oh, sorry, fifty-two.” Whatever. Enough!)

After the pursuit was over (two laps of the course) I spent the next three and a half hours standing at an exercise setting cones. The pursuit was fun, but frankly I’m not sure it was really worth all the downtime. It was nice to have an opportunity to employ my new 40,000 candlepower flashlight, anyway.

Friday we were allowed to come in two hours late to class, not reporting until 10:00. Perhaps in exchange for this boon, we took four written tests over the next six hours: an EVOC written test (98%, hoorah), two Criminal Law quizzes, and finally a Criminal Law final. This last was exactly no fun at all, because it consisted of watching the movie Saw and answering 25 questions based upon it. (”In [whatever] scene, what four crimes were committed against Adam?”) We were paired with a partner and could use our books and even talk to other people, but it was very difficult nevertheless trying to keep up with the movie while simultaneously writing and analyzing the elements of various possible crimes–particularly for someone like me who’d never seen the film and had no clue about . In the end my partner and I ran out of time and had to scribble out a couple of final answers. I’m sure we passed, but perhaps not with flying colors.

One more week is behind us. On Monday we get back into the PT/DT routine, have some Criminal Procedures, and then the real fun begins: two hours of OC-10 classroom followed closely by two hours of OC-10 practical. KPD issued me my own little canister of fiery doom so that I could have the pleasure of being sprayed with the same stuff that we actually use rather than whatever they’ve got at the academy. I’ll start working up good similes for the pain this weekend and be ready to select the best one to communicate the sublime pain of being OC’d next week.

Yesterday we began the practical portion of our EVOC training with the skid car and some post-PIT maneuvers. The post-pit procedures are designed to prevent things like this from happening. In that video (at 01:50 or so), it seems to me that the suspect should not have been able to get away if the police had executed good post-PIT maneuvers. As we were taught yesterday, the second police vehicle (the one that comes after the actual PIT vehicle, which correctly drove on past) should have swept around left and come in on the suspect’s right rear bumper at a 45-degree angle while the third car should have done the same thing on the right front bumper, thereby pinning the suspect vehicle in place. Another fine example of a good PIT but horrible follow-up is this video, where the second vehicle does hit the front right bumper correctly (and spins his tires trying to pin him!), but nobody else comes in on the front left–so the suspect just drives away.

As you might imagine, this post-PIT stuff was great fun to practice, since it involved both driving fast and ramming a vehicle (albeit at very low speeds). We were not taught the actual PIT technique, since some agencies do not permit it–we were only taught post-PIT procedures because the State Patrol utilizes PIT. Even so, it was fun–moreso than the skid car, since I’ve already driven on ice and snow before.

Today we spent the entire day at the Spokane Raceway Park doing more EVOC–a low-speed skills course involving precision maneuvering (including a lot of backing up), an “observation drive” where we followed a suspect vehicle and communicated various details to dispatch. All the while we were trying not to let the suspect dictate our driving patterns–the suspect driver was a Spokane officer with a stellar sense of humor and managed several times to actually get behind and follow the recruits instead of vice versa (but not me!). I did make the instructor riding with me a little nervous about the mechanical condition of the training car when I took it off-road a little fast.

However, I later saw that my off-road maneuvers were nothing compared to the standard exercises set up on the raceway. One instructor indicated that most cars would probably burn through one full set of tires by the end of our three-day course, and I’m starting to believe him. There are a variety of exercises, ranging from lower-speed tight corners to high-speed lane changes and obstacle avoidance. Many exercises involve sudden movements at 40-50mph followed by hard (as in gas-pedal-to-the-floor) acceleration immediately thereafter, interspersed with periods of braking. Today alone we put two cars out of commission (though I don’t know why; they just stopped running). By the end of the day the cars had begun reeking of various burning or overheated components–transmission fluid, brakes, rubber, exhaust. Many of them sounded pretty bad, too. (Of course, none of these were in stellar condition to begin with.) This course is probably as hard and brutal as I’ll ever drive any vehicle–certainly I’d never drive any of my vehicles this way, but then I don’t plan on responding to emergencies in my vehicle either. The actual track time was a little disappointing; apart from the low-speed skills stuff and observation drive I probably only spent 30-40 minutes in the car. The rest of the day was spent resetting cones knocked over by other student drivers.

We’ve got one more full day of this tomorrow, and then night driving starting late Thursday afternoon and running until about 23:30. Following that we’ve got a horde of testing on Friday–between EVOC and Criminal Law, two major tests and two quizzes, plus we must have a speech ready–some cheesiness on “what law enforcement means to me”. The idea is to be good but not too good because evidently the top three have to give their speeches again at graduation. It is a fine art, writing a speech good enough to convince the instructor that you’re not “throwing” your speech while not sufficiently good to garner any student votes.