At the end of September, I'll be going to the Writers' Police Academy, which is held on the grounds of a real police academy in North Carolina. One of the things we'll be doing is working with a Firearms Training Simulator (FATS). I have actually gotten a chance to take part in FATS training a few years back when I attended the FBI Citizen's Academy.
Click here to learn more about FATS and see plenty of photos.
The most disturbing scenario I saw in my FATS training was a situation where an agent and a suspect were fighting over a gun, rolling over and over on the floor of a hotel corridor, basically on top of one another. Occasionally the gun would go off, narrowly missing important things. The student playing the agent's partner fired several times, but later was told he had actually shot off his partner's finger and missed the bad guy completely.
So what were we supposed to do, we asked the instructor. His answer? The partner should have walked up to the bad guy, pressed the gun against his head, and fired.
