Getting a shot at being a cop

For 10 weeks, those of us attending Schaumburg's Citizens Police Academy had heard all about the stressful training officers receive and the life-or-death decisions they must learn to make in a split second.

Now it was our turn.

This week's session was divided into three sections in which we were expected to demonstrate both good aim with firearms and good judgment in when or when not to use them.

Nothing's routine: For the first exercise, class members had to practice confronting the unknown of a random driver during a traffic stop.

But as we'd heard since the class began, there's no such thing as a routine traffic stop.

The same training supervisor was all padded up to play the part of the stopped driver while we all played the part of a patrol officer.

My own stop involved an apparently drunk driver wielding a knife and staggering toward me. While not accustomed to telling people what to do so forcefully, I eventually did find my voice in time to get the "driver" to drop the knife while still a sufficient distance away.

Not to give away too many of the scenarios for future attendees, but suffice it to say that there were instances of people firing when it wasn't warranted, and hesitating too long when it was.

But as we were reminded, the decisions we were forced to make in a moment of stress could be second-guessed by attorneys, juries, the media and the general public for years to come.

Danger around every corner: An even more stressful situation awaited us after that exercise.

This time, five of us were outfitted with assault weapons and grouped together as a sort of SWAT team to conduct a mock building search as if we were responding to the call of an armed subject.

In this exercise, teens from the department's Explorer program played the part of both offenders and victims.

And, yes, one of the "victims" did accidentally get shot by our team, and one of the gunmen did take us just a bit more by surprise than was ideal, but we all got the point. It takes a lot of dedication, a lot of practice and a lot of mental clarity to be good at something so dangerous.

Home on the range: After these exercises with either disarmed or non-lethal guns, we all reported to the department's shooting range to try our hands at real marksmanship.

Though they may or may not have admitted it, I suspect this was the part of the class most attendees had been secretly looking forward to for the past two months.

The policewoman who was acting as my guide and supervisor commended me on my shooting, saying I would definitely have passed the exam.

But while most of my shots were fairly on the mark, the sight of my target afterward paled in comparison to that of a woman in the class who'd virtually traced the shape of a heart and a brain with her bullets.

• Staff Writer Eric Peterson is enrolled in this spring's session of the Schaumburg Citizens Police Academy and is writing about his experiences in this weekly column. Many area police departments offer such academies so check with yours if you're interested in participating.