The Day I Brought LEGOs to SWAT Team Training
I walked in with a clear shoebox filled with assorted LEGO bricks. The classroom was filled with two dozen SWAT cops. Not just a random group of tactical police officers...but my team, of which I've been a member for 16 years. For those cops who claim "little surprises me," their faces betrayed them. The questions were simple: What the heck are we going to be doing with LEGOs in SWAT training? Exercise #1 was an individual warm-up: Inspect a block made-up of four LEGO bricks. Diagram it. Take notes. Draw it. Remember it. No time limit. No pictures. No touching. Cover it up. (No peeking!) Relyi ng only on the notes or diagrams you've made, recreate the block from a pile of loose pieces. No time limit. Easy enough, right? Except not every officer built a correct replica. (One-fifth of them made the identical mistake: transposing the top two bricks.) Some might argue that Exercise #2 is considerably more difficult than the first ex