The Black Box

the windshield of a patrol car that was pulling to a stop behind a car that had pulled onto the road’s shoulder. An electronic voice from overhead announced the situation.
    “You and your partner have made a traffic stop of a vehicle that was driving erratically.”
    Almost immediately two young men got out of both sides of the car in front of them. They both started yelling and cursing at the officers who had stopped them.
    “Man, why you fucking with me?” said the driver.
    “What’d we do, man?” said the passenger. “This ain’t fair!”
    It escalated from there. Bosch called out commands for the men to turn and place their hands on the roof of their car.But the two men ignored him. Bosch registered tattoos, hang-low pants, and baseball hats worn backwards. He told them to calm down. But they didn’t, and then Bosch’s daughter chimed in.
    “Calm down! Place your hands on the car. Do not—”
    Simultaneously the two men went to their waistbands. Bosch drew his weapon too, and as soon as he saw the driver’s weapon hand coming up, he opened fire. He heard fire come from his daughter on his right as well.
    Both men on the screen went down.
    The lights came up.
    “So,” said Holodnak from behind them. “What did we see?”
    “They had guns,” Maddie said.
    “Are you sure?” Holodnak asked.
    “My guy did. I saw it.”
    “Harry, what about you? What did you see?”
    “I saw a gun,” Bosch said.
    He looked over at his daughter and nodded.
    “Okay,” Holodnak said. “Let’s back it up.”
    He then ran the scenario over in slow motion. Sure enough, both men had reached for guns and were raising them to fire when Bosch and his daughter had fired first. Hits on the screen were marked with red Xs and the misses were black. Maddie had hit the passenger with three shots in the torso, no misses. Bosch had hit the driver twice in the chest and missed high with the third shot because his target was already falling backward to the ground.
    Holodnak said they had both done well.
    “Remember, we are always at a disadvantage,” he said. “Ittakes a second and a half to recognize the weapon, another second and a half to assess and fire. Three seconds. That’s the advantage a shooter has on us. That is what we must work to overcome. Three seconds is too long. People die in three seconds.”
    They next did a roll-up on a bank robbery in progress. As with the first exercise, they both opened fire and took down a man who emerged through the bank’s glass doors and took aim at the officers.
    From there the scenarios grew more difficult. In one, there was a door knock and the resident opened the door angrily, gesturing with a black cell phone in his hand. Then there was a domestic dispute in which the arguing husband and wife both turned on the responding officers. Holodnak approved their handling of both situations without firing their weapons. He then put Madeline through a series of solo scenarios where she was responding to calls without a partner.
    In the first exercise, she encountered a mentally deranged man with a knife and talked him into dropping the weapon. The second involved another domestic dispute, but in this case the male waved a knife at her from ten feet away, and she correctly opened fire.
    “It takes two strides to cover ten feet,” Holodnak said. “If you had waited for him to make that move, he would’ve gotten to you as you fired. That would be a tie. Who loses in a tie?”
    “I do,” Madeline said.
    “That’s right. You handled it correctly.”
    Next was a scenario where she entered a school after a report of gunfire. Moving down an empty hallway, she heard children’s screams from up ahead. She then made the turnand saw a man outside a classroom door, pointing a gun at a woman huddled on the floor, trying to shield her head with her hands.
    “Please don’t,” the woman begged.
    The gunman’s back was to Madeline. She fired immediately, striking the man in the back and head, knocking him down before he could shoot the woman. Even though she had not identified herself as a police officer or told the gunman to drop his weapon, Holodnak told her she had performed well and within policy. He pointed to a whiteboard along the left wall. It had some shooting diagrams drawn on it, but across the top it had one word in large capitals: IDOL
    “ Immediate defense of life,” Holodnak said. “You are within policy if your action is in immediate defense of life. That can mean