For as long as I have been dreading getting Tasered and pepper sprayed I've been looking forward to learning how to drive police cars in high speed pursuits. Now I have learned that more officers are killed in automobile accidents than in anything else (Yikes! But it kind of makes sense given that we're behind the wheel of a car for 90% of our time on duty), and that bad things often happen to officers, suspects, and innocent bystanders during pursuits. Fortunately, I have also learned that at least at BPD, you only pursue if the threat posed by the driver poses a greater threat to the public than your pursuit will. In other words, you only get into a pursuit if you have a good reason, and if things start to get too harry then you call it off and track the guy down later.
But none of this really needed to dampen my enthusiasm when it came to learning how to drive in a high speed pursuit. On a closed course and with experienced instructors to help us, it was like grown-up bumper cars, but so much better. We got to tear around that course, and they even told us to drive "to the limit" so that we could learn what our limits, and those of the car, are. I had a sweet double fishtail spin-out one time, and a couple of other cool spins and slides along the way. We got to do evasive braking maneuvers, where we would burn down the straightaway at between 40 and 50 mph and then have to slam the breaks and swerve around these cones like they were cars pulling out in front of us. Then we had to do perception timing drills involving hauling down the road and then having a three-lane traffic light suddenly come on and having to elect which lane to choose and how to respond. The better we got, the faster we went and the shorter notice we got before the light changed.
But the best of all was the PIT training. PIT stands for "Pursuit Immobilization/Intervention Technique" and basically involves spinning the other car out by pushing the back end around to break its traction with the road. It's a surprisingly predictable and graceful event when done correctly. The instructors showed us how to do it, while we were in the car, and we watched them spin, and then got spun, several times. It was quite a rush. It's also hard to get over the life-long conditioning of "don't get too close to other moving cars or you will crash and die!" When the instructors did it you couldn't even feel the cars touching until you were suddenly spinning around. If you really do it well, you may not even see as much as a scratch on the bumper. Crazy! However, if you don't contact the other car in the right spot, you will either slide of the back bumper and they'll keep going (too far back), or worse, "T-bone" the other vehicle by spinning it and smashing into its broadside (too far forward). So in a nutshell, it's very important to do it right because otherwise you could be in a serious wreck, but if you do it right, the person won't even know until it's too late and both cars will be fine (except for maybe a little extra wear on the tires).
Once we got to do it ourselves successfully four times, then they had us do a couple of scenarios. Three of us drove police cars, two marked cars and one pit car, and then two instructors would serve as either the suspect or the dispatcher. As we drove around the roads at the far end of the course, a call would come out and we would have to locate the suspect, attempt to stop, and then decide whether or not to pursue. If we did pursue then we had to coordinate with the pit car and then chase the suspect out onto the skid pad where we would PIT the suspect car and then engage in either a box-in (car is threat, not suspect - i.e. DUI) or a felony stop (suspect is threat - i.e. Armed robber/Carjacker). I got to drive the pit car on the last scenario of the day (Carjacker) and I "pitted" that sucker like a champ and then my buddies got him out of the car. Unfortunately (for him), he got out of the car with a fake gun in his hand, we told him to drop it and he refused, so we fake shot him and then went through the rest of the felony stop procedure. It was great training. Below I diagrammed a simplified version using a Google Earth screenshot of the Idaho State Police training facility in Meridian (just West of Boise):
If you want to watch a sweet video where the cops PIT this guy 3 times, but he manages to weasel out of it with some pretty impressive driving (and a manual transmission, as the PIT maneuver will cause an automatic transmission vehicle to stall), then follow this link:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1190583987
They get him in the end when they ram him up onto the curb after he gets off the freeway, and then do some sweet slides over the hood to yank the guy out of the car. Remember Chris Rock's advice about dealing with the police: "When you see flashing lights behind you, stop immediately. If the cops have to come get you, they're brining a whoopin' with them." (Paraphrased) Now, that's not true in all cases, but you probably are going to get dog piled after you've led 10 cops down the freeway at 90+ mph and everyone's adrenaline is through the roof. Good times.
No comments:
Post a Comment