The nine female police officers who work as weapons experts in the Firearms and Tactics Training Section in the Bronx have forged a special sisterhood as the only women among the unit’s 109 members.
“You don’t see a lot of females at the range so to be here is a big thing,” said Sgt. Lauren Southwell, 38, who joined the department in 2007 and entered the Firearms & Tactics Section in 2024. “I feel like we have to work harder to gain the same respect our counterparts have.”
The unit teaches new recruits how to use and take care of guns and other weapons, including pepper spray and Tasers. They oversee the recruits who take the department’s shooting qualifications test and try to help them pass when they have problems.
On a recent morning, about 50 recruits lined up roughly 25 yards from their targets at the range, trying to pass a Pistol Qualification Course, which is mandatory for cops. They have 10 tries to qualify.
“They might be a bit nervous,” said Police Officer Madelyn Perez, a veteran firearms trainer who joined the NYPD in 2005 and went to firearms in 2015.
Perez was standing behind the recruits as they began to fire in unison at the paper bullseyes, when suddenly, one of the recruits dropped his magazine and dove low in front of the shooter next to him to retrieve it.
He managed to recover the magazine and get back up to his feet, but the trainers took note.
“The dude bent down and went in front of the shooter next to him,” an alarmed instructor said to another cop. “That was too close. He’s done.”
The cop who made the mistake has nine more chances to pass the shooting test — which once had a limit of five tries, police said. The newbies are also given a written exam.
Some of the women trainers had early experience in handling weapons, while others needed to practice more when they were recruits.
Instructor Sgt. Vanessa Solis learned to shoot when she was 12 because of her father, she said.
“We would go hunting upstate and because of him I knew the fundamentals of how to shoot,” said the 40-year-old, who joined the department in 2013. “He’s very proud of me.”
“Right now, we’re teaching and instructing recruits,” she said, amid the crack of repetitive gunfire.
Officer Nicole Figueroa never shot a gun while growing up in the Dominican Republic, but found she had a talent when she joined the Finest in 2015.
“When I came through the academy, I was pretty good at shooting,” said Figueroa, 34. “So I was like, ‘Oh wow, I would like to work here someday.’”
She practiced in her private time until she was ready to apply for a position at the range, she said.
“It’s something that you’ve got to practice at the end of the day,” said the officer, who has a bachelor’s degree from John Jay College for Criminal Justice.
Officer Jeanatte Jimenez of the Bronx joined the department in 2017 because she wanted “to make a change” in her community.
After serving in an East Harlem precinct, Jimenez became skilled in firearms beginning in 2021 because she wanted to help recruits like herself, who were cautious around guns at the start.
“I learned because I listened,” she said. “‘Close your mouth, open your ears and you’ll be fine.’”
“We all support one another,” she said. “They are my biggest support group.”
Officer Lanayia Soto, a mother of three, specializes in heavy weapons.
The 42-year-old grew up in Spanish Harlem and got her bachelor’s degree in flying at Farmingdale State University on Long Island with hopes of joining the NYPD’s Aviation Unit.
As a recruit, she found she had a hidden talent in shooting.
“It just came kind of naturally,” she said, admitting, when pressed, that she was “one of the best” in her class. “I was pretty decent.”
Soto and cops who work with her “train everyone that carries anything other than the standard 9mm,” she said, listing undercovers, the Emergency Services Unit’s Sniper Team, Highway Patrol, the Strategic Response Group and World Trade Center cops.
The most experienced officer in the unit, Officer Madelyn Perez, joined the NYPD in July 2005 after witnessing people fleeing the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“They were covered in the white dust,” Perez, 51, said. “We headed to the pier and seeing all that was alarming. So I decided to be a police officer.”
Today, Perez, whose family is from Cuba, trains cops in advanced tactics.
She tells recruits who are having trouble learning firearms that “hard work does pay off.”
“It may not happen right away but you have to work for what you want,” she said. “Things are always going to lighten up.”
The unit’s commander, Inspector Lashonda Dyce, has done all she can to make sure the unit reflects the city, including women, since arriving in 2022, she said.
“I have a female in just about every unit that we have,” she said, emphasizing that many of the women were in place when she arrived.
“When I got here, I was shocked that they never gave a woman the opportunity to work in the armory,” she said, so she put a woman in the unit where broken guns are repaired.
The qualifications for women in the unit are the same as they are for men, she pointed out.
“I didn’t put that officer in the armory because she was female,” Dyce stressed. “I put her in there because she was capable. She had the same skills the men had.”
