Originally Posted by bluetwo
Truth be known that size vest would be more appropriate for Kuwait, but it's nice to have the big one for the drive north.
We (M1 tankers) have a much smaller vest that we wear in the tank for ballistic protection. But it wouldn't really stop much of a round. Maybe an out of range 9 mil round, or a piece of shrapnel.
So you were in cop training or something?
Yeah, went through a California Police Academy -- 5.5 months, 788 hours, fulltime monday through friday.
Graduated a couple months ago. Fear my (round up) 94% average in academics, and 99.8% in scenario testing.
Our academy was brand new, so it even had a mock city block, with buildings, banks, houses, everything; over the course of 3 weeks we'd do 10 and 12 hour "scenarios" where our dispatch center (ran by the academy director) would just dispatch us to a call, no idea what it was or whatever. And we'd drive to the location and deal with the situation. If we needed backup, or to enter, or to create a perimeter, or to do an investigation, etc -- it was all up to us. And at the end of it, you, as expected, gotta write an accurate report on it.
One of my scenarios I got called to was a damn vehicle accident, I had 1 dead, 4 minor injuries, and one serious injury (they use roll players and makeup and shit), so I called in for a medivac and about 5 minutes later one of Sonoma Counties helecopters calls me up on my radio to ask where to set it down and to help load the injured. Didn't expect them to do that for realism, but, they did -- even picked up the injured person and left to simulate them leaving the scene.
Another scenario (we fire simunitions during simulations, if it gets to that point) we were doing a high risk scenario stop (3 officers getting people out of a car and arresting them), when a 5th suspect came over a burm about 100 yards away -- I was the right side (cover) officer, saw him, drew the shotgun on him and then proceeded to empty 8 rounds of buckshot (simunition buckshot) and reach for my HK and fire nearly 2 magazines afterwords.
Most of the scenarios are mundane obvious stuff though -- domestic violence, traffic citations, accidents, landlord tenent issues, rape stuff (**** that sucks), typical "someones crawling around my house" calls, robberies, bank robberies, misdemeanor crimes, child abuse, etc. that sort of thing.
Needless to say, it was a pretty good experience / realistic training.