I took the police firearms training course – but I’d have been on a murder charge after shooting TWO kids
THE split-second, life and death decisions faced by armed cops are hammered home to me in a school massacre simulation – as I shoot two innocent people.
Mercifully, my electric handgun replicating a standard police issue Glock 17 fires lasers instead of bullets during the computerised mock-up of a gunman on the loose.
The Judgment Range at the Met’s training centre in Gravesend, Kent, is used for coaching firearms officers in the field and post-incident briefings.
I was the first journalist to be invited by the Met to take part in an exercise there.
An instructor gives me a rough outline of the simulated school shootout, similar to briefings delivered to initial responding firearms officers when intelligence is sparse.
In this scenario, multiple phone calls have been received about a gunman firing inside the school.
I am playing the role of the first officer on the scene.
The test, similar to a video game, involves remaining static in front of a screen flicking through computer-generated images to mirror my virtual footsteps and view.
I come across several bodies in a hallway — though I cannot later say precisely how many — before arriving at a classroom door.
The projector image peers inside, where people stand, backs to a wall, while a man in a grey top points a gun towards the ceiling.
I want to make sure it is not a phone and, satisfied by the clear outline of a firearm, I take aim.
My first laser shot hits him in the elbow, but the round ricochets into the chest of a girl “pupil” behind him.
As my target drops to the floor, I keep firing — 12 shots in all — but I don’t spot his gun is now lying several feet from his prone body.
“Why did you shoot again?”, asks the instructor in a rigorous post- incident briefing.
“Because I wanted to make sure he was dead”, I reply.
Unfortunately, one of the superfluous shots has hit another innocent bystander.
Clearly I am no “Dirty Harry”, as the instructor says there is enough evidence to charge me with murder.
‘Adrenaline and fear’
A second test is more successful.
I am briefed about a man potentially armed with a weapon threatening a woman at a house.
Learning that police have been to the address on previous occasions, suggesting a domestic incident, I become more cautious.
Entering the darkened property, I yell, ‘Police! Armed police!’ and make my way up the stairs, where I hear screams.
I call for immediate back-up and enter a bedroom where a knife-wielding man is threatening a woman with a blade on the bed.
It flashes through my mind he could be a rapist and, had I been sure, I may have pulled the trigger.
But with the briefing in mind about a possible domestic situation, I wait, order him to drop the blade — and he complies.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the woman produces a firearm and points it at the man.
It is only later, while being debriefed and watching the video, that I see she had taken the gun from a bedside cabinet drawer.
I yell at her to drop her weapon and, after an agonising moment which feels like hours, she obliges.
The drama is over without injury.
The toughest part of the exercise was trying to recall exactly what had happened as I was grilled by the instructing officer afterwards.
Split-second decisions seem to be instinctive when adrenaline and fear are flooding through your veins.
Scientific tests show that memories of such fast-moving events are enhanced after two periods of sleep.
But I cannot fathom how any armed officer involved in a fatal shooting can possibly answer with absolute accuracy questions from a lawyer in court years later.
Another challenge for officers is knowing if a suspect’s gun is genuine.
Sun videographer May Molyneux and I were shown a display of weapons at the Met MO19 specialist firearm command’s museum at the Kent training base.
One, resembling Buzz Lightyear’s toy gun, transpired to be a large calibre target revolver.
Another gold-coloured object I dismissed as fake was a live .22 single-shot pistol made in a prison.
The curator said the best way to tell if a gun is real is by its weight, as an authentic inner chamber and workings will make it heavier.
But how can anyone really know unless they are holding the weapon
We also watch Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Officers and Armed Response Vehicle cops training.
ARV officers use enhanced medical skills to treat casualties — played by local volunteers — of a simulated terrorist vehicle attack.
‘Eliminate terrorists’
Fewer than 0.05 per cent of armed police deployments lead to shots being fired — less than one in every 2,000 callouts.
The experts utilised their life-saving knowledge 813 times from the start of 2023 to the end of November.
Met assistant commissioner Matt Twist said: “They save lives many more times than they fire shots.”
Later in the exercise, we watch as a team of CTSFOs storm a two- storey “nightclub”, where two terrorists are shooting revellers.
It is modelled on the 2015 Bataclan Theatre attack in Paris, in which 89 died, and is also a chilling reminder of the foiled 2007 jihadi plot to detonate a car bomb outside London’s Tiger Tiger nightclub.
With disco music booming, officers eliminate the terrorists and secure the building before tending to casualties on both floors — near-simultaneously taking and saving lives.