This week we got to learn how to do something every person
wants to do at least once in their lifetime...drive really fast. Each day we
split into pairs and were assigned a cruiser for the day. It was ours to take
care of and to drive for the whole day. During EVOC we spent most of our time
on the airport tarmac perfecting our turning, reversing, parking, accelerating
and swerving to miss the hundreds, maybe thousands of cones laid out for us.
Our EVOC instructors taught us the importance of shuffle steering during high
speeds and the need to always pay attention to our surroundings. They pushed us
to do better and challenged us everyday to do better than before.
After passing our driving tests on the tarmac we began to
work on pursuits out on some streets near the airport. More cones were set up
and we spent the day with our partners perfecting the course getting ready for
that night. After we got the hang of it our instructors jumped into another car
and we we started to them in our cruisers. During the pursuit we practiced
using the radio to talk to dispatch and tell them the information they would
need like our location, speeds, the car description, the occupants of the car,
and the conditions of the road. We worked in pairs each driving a cruiser and
took turns being the primary radio and the primary car in the chase. It was
pretty cool because not only did we get to use our lights and sirens but we
also got to try and catch up to our instructors before the course ended. Our
last day of EVOC was filled with other smaller courses on the tarmac just for
fun and a final speed course to see how well we’ve improved over the week. We
all saw improvements and learned a lot we'll for sure use in the future. Friday
we went out to the range to start our first day of firearms. It was mostly
powerpoints and talking about safety when using a firearm but we did get ours
handed out to start getting a feel for them. It's safe to say that we are all
very excited for the action packed week ahead.