Hey guys! Welcome back and thank you for coming back for another chapter of my personal experiences through rookie school and my law enforcement career!
Yesterday we got in to talking about starting the pursuit driving block of instruction which I had been dying to get started on. Needless to say that I wasn't disappointed with the first day by no means :)
In the last chapter I mentioned that the cadets had a choice between two different patrol cruisers to drive, a Chevrolet Caprice with a LT1 350 police package or a Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor. I was wondering if anyone would ask me this question and finally someone did! @rebeccaryan asked me which car I chose to drive during the class in the comments section. Well, at first I chose the Chevrolet just because I've always been a Chevy guy at heart and that thing was just so powerful BUT, I quickly changed my mind after driving both cars. Even though the Chevy was more powerful, the Ford was lighter and handled better around the track which resulted in faster times. So for wheel spinning and doughnut purposes I chose the Chevy but for test time, I chose the Ford.
The chase car and rabbit was the most fun part of the block of instruction. The rest of the block was more intense and stressful. It included more precision driving and split second decision/reaction courses.
It's going to be hard for me to put in to words how some of the courses were so I found a diagram of a course that is very similar to one of the tests that we had to complete. This one was not that easy and required quite a bit of precision and focus, we had several cadets that needed remedial training on this.The time was the enemy on this course, not so much the difficulty.
We had to do many of these forwards and backwards. Forwards was easy peezy, in reverse it was easy without the peezy. It was really easy to lose control of the front end of your car while going in reverse.
I couldn't find a diagram for this next test so I just drew it. I never claimed to be an artist so bare with me. This was my least favorite of tests, I hated this one!
Basically the instructor would be riding along with you in the passenger seat to make sure that your going the appropriate speed of 30 mph. YOU HAVE TO MAINTAIN THIS SPEED THROUGHOUT THE COURSE, NO BRAKING OR LETTING OFF OF THE GAS! Once you reached the line, the instructor would say a command of either left, right or center. It was your job to drive the car in the corresponding lane that the instructor announced. There was only a split second to react accordingly without taking out cones. To me, this was the most difficult test there was. It was amazing how you would be trying to think of what the instructor was going to say and it would mess with your mind and mess you up. Often you would do the opposite of what he said.
The last course that I can remember being tested on was a long curve simulation where we were required again to maintain a set speed of 30 mph. This one wasn't too bad as long as you entered the curve correctly. Believe it or not, playing video games on my PlayStation actually benefited me and gave me an upper hand on these courses imho.
This post is part of a series of posts that will cover a large portion of my life beginning just before starting my law enforcement career. The content and pictures posted in said articles belong to @bluelightbandit. If you haven't read the prior posts, I highly recommend that you check those out to catch up to speed, thanks!
First post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-1
Second post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-2
Third post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-3
Fourth post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-4
Fifth post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-5
Sixth post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-6
Seventh post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-7
Just to change things up a wee bit in case some of you are getting tired of looking at my picture. Maybe this one will pull more views for me :) @bluelightbandit
