who was watching her with rapt interest.
“So you do know something about guns.”
“A little,” she returned with a grim smile. “And you’re right. They are all blanks. I hope you don’t mind my checking for myself. My father always taught me that when it comes to loaded weapons, I shouldn’t take anybody else’s word for it.”
There was a rustle of appreciative chuckles from a few of Joanna’s fellow classmates. Dave Thompson was not amused. “What else did your daddy teaich you?” he asked.
“One or two things,” Joanna answered. “Now what do you want me to do with this pistol?”
“Put it back in the holster and strap on the belt.”
The belt—designed to be used on adult male bodies—was cumbersome and several sizes too large for Joanna’s slender waist. Even fastened in the smallest hole, the heavy belt slipped down until it rested on the curve of her hips rather than staying where it belonged. Convinced the low-slung gun shade her look like a comic parody of some old-time gunfighter, Joanna felt ridiculous. As she struggled with the awkward belt, she barely heard what Thompson was saying.
“You ever hear of a shoot/don’t shoot scenario?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re about to. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Once you get that belt on properly, I want you to spend a few minutes practicing removing the weapon from and returning it to the holster. No matter what you see on TV, cops don’t spend all their time walking around holding drawn sidearms in their hands. But when you need a gun, you’ve gotta be able to get it out in a hell of a hurry.”
Joanna attempted to do as she was told. By then the belt had slipped so far down her body, she was afraid it was going to fall off altogether. Each time she tried to draw the weapon, the belt jerked up right along with the gun. With the belt sliding loosely around her waist, she couldn’t get enough leverage to pull the gun free of the holster. It took several bumbling tries before she finally succeeded in freeing the gun from the leather.
“Very good,” Dave Thompson said at last. “Now, here’s the next step. I want you to stand right here beside this VCR. The tape I just loaded is one of about a hundred or so that we use here at the academy. In each one, the camera is the cop. The lens of the camera is situated at the cop’s eye level. You’ll be seeing the incident unfold through the cop’s eyes, through his point of view. You’ll see what he sees, hear what he hears.
“Each scenario is based on a real case,” he added. “You’ll have the same information available to you as the cop did in the real case. At some point in the film—some critical juncture in the action—you will have to decide whether or not to draw your weapon, whether or not to fire. It’s up to you. Ready?”
Joanna nodded. Aware that all eyes in the room were turned on her, she waited while Thompson checked to be sure the plug was in and then switched on the video.
For a moment the screen was covered with snow, then the room was filled with the sound of a mumbled police radio transmission. When the picture came on, Joanna was seeing the world through though the front windshield of a moving patrol car, one that was following another vehicle—a Ford Taurus—down a broad city street. Moments after the tape started, the lead vehicle, carrying two visible occupants, signaled for a right-hand turn and then pulled off onto a tree-lined residential side street. Seconds later the patrol car turned as well. After it followed the lead vehicle for a block or two, there was the brief squawk from a siren as the officer signaled for the other car to pull over.
In what seemed like slow motion, the door of the patrol car opened and the officer stepped out into the seemingly peaceful street. The camera, positioned at shoulder height, moved jerkily toward the topped car. In the background came a steady murmur of continuing radio transmissions. Standing just to the rear of the driver’s door, the camera bent down and peered inside. Two young men were seated in front.
“Step out of the car please,” the officer said, speaking over the sound of loud music blaring from the radio in the Taurus.
