Loyal Scaiaholics will recall I have an affinity for cheating death.

That came up recently when ATF came to town. They’ve been going to different cities to lead training for media to see how police officers are trained in events leading up to the use of force.

“I do like bustin’ punks,” I thought to myself.

But the training opened with a gentle nudge that maybe, just maybe, Hollywood is leading us astray. I showed up late to the training. I had to cover another story that morning, but for the sake of comparing myself to a street-smart officer who plays by his own rules, I’d like to say I was late because I show up when I feel like it.

You know what’s actually an important part of law enforcement? Diligent note-taking. We learned about court cases surrounding use of force and statistics so people could better understand Department of Justice Policy and why police might take a certain action.

We learned why officers might reach for their gun instead of a taser.

An officer may also shoot someone in the back who is running away because that person may be a threat to others and point the gun behind him and fire back at officers.

Statistically, ATF says a person can raise a gun from his or her waist and fire at an officer in .26 seconds or fire from a car window in .25 seconds. Officers are trained to spot danger signals so they can act instead of react.

An officer would take .35 seconds to react if that officer was already aiming his or her gun, .83 seconds if the officer was holding the gun at his side and 1.92 seconds if the gun is still snapped in its holster.

In that Supreme Court case, “objective reasonableness” was determined to include a range of factors and allows for the possibility different officers might make different choices.

“I’d really feel better if I could practice,” I explained. I had shown up late, after all.

Fort Worth police have a very detailed simulator at their headquarters, so ATF ushered the reporters into a series of different scenarios. Officer Scaia responded to a 911 call about a man yelling at a woman in a vacant lot.

It’s possible I had some advantages over an officer in real life. While the gentleman was using quite a bit of questionable language, I feel like the average police officer does not have someone yelling, “Action!” to notify them something was about to happen.

“Ain’t nothin’ good happenin’ at a vacant lot,” I suspected.

One of the items we covered in training was why officers don’t just fire once. In fact, that “Hollywood” slide went into the idea that a person will be immediately incapacitated by a single shot.

One of the other reporters was put in a convenience store where he shot the person, but that person fired back from the ground.

Since I took my turn toward the end, I could build off the mistakes the other reporters had made. One of the things we learned is that an officer’s breathing gets faster, blood pressure increases and peripheral vision is reduced by up to 80% when the survival mechanism kicks in.

Some of the other reporters had missed someone else in a convenience store or someone else pointing a gun at them from a car. So I proudly declared the woman in my case had a syringe and a tourniquet. Not just a tourniquet. A blue tourniquet.

So surely I had busted that punk, right?

“I feel like I shot first,” I explained.

But it turns out I fired a full .3 seconds after the other guy. He closes by telling me, “good job,” but just between us, I don’t believe I did do a particularly good job, given that I was killed. I did get five rounds off in less than a second, but it’s possible two shots went over that wall. We learned an officer may not shoot once because it takes time to start shooting, but it also takes time for the officer to assess the situation and stop shooting.

So let my second death teach us all a valuable lesson: don’t reach into your belt when you’re talking to a police officer because that officer may not follow my lead and just hang out for a bit to see what you’re pulling out.