Sun Cuifeng is an ordinary police officer in Jiading whose duty is to keep the community safe. However, her extraordinary shooting skills means she is not like any other officer.

Sun joined the force in 1996, when she held a gun for the first time. During her first training session, she was always on target, not missing it once. Her accuracy and natural talent made many of her peers jealous.

Like many other female officers, Sun was assigned to a local police station to be in charge of household registration and community management.

Apart from the annual shooting training session and test, Sun rarely had a chance to hold a gun, but she always got a good score in the test. In 2006, she was selected to take part in Shanghai police force’s shooting competition where she came in sixth.

Asked how she developed an interest in guns, Sun smiles as she replies: “It suits my personality.”

During her 19-year career, Sun has been mainly engaged in regular paperwork such as internal reports and mediation in small disputes among community residents. She handles these matters smoothly.

She also excels at questioning suspects.

Once, when colleagues brought in a female suspected of burglary, none of the men in the station could get her to talk. The woman lashed out at anybody who tried to question her. Eventually the men asked Sun, the only woman in the station, to step in, thinking that she could probably relate to the suspect in a way they could not.

The suspect lowered her guard when she saw it was a woman who came into the interrogation room. Sun chatted with the suspect, and empathized with her situation.

“I believe that you are a good person who’s made some bad choices,” Sun told her. “You can mend your way by first admitting to the fact that you did something wrong.” Sun remained patient and calm during the entire conversation and the woman confessed.

Confidence and perseverance — Sun combines these two qualities perfectly. And these are what make her an exceptional shooter.

In September 2014, Sun and five men from the local SWAT team were chosen to take part in a citywide shooting competition which was also a qualification event for a national competition. Sun ranked first in the women’s pistol event. She became one of the three women and nine men chosen to represent the city’s police force in the national competition.

The QSZ-92 pistol used for the national competition is bigger and has more powerful recoil than the Type 77 pistol she had used before. It took Sun quite some time to adapt to the new gun.

In the competition, participants are required to turn off the safety catch after firing a few shots and turn it back on. The trigger of the QSZ-92 tends to become tighter after this procedure, making it harder to keep firing shots accurately. To overcome this difficulty, she practiced with a grip exerciser to improve the strength of her fingers.

Final scores are determined by dividing the number of shots on target by the time it takes to fire a shot. Sun had to fire each shot quickly and precisely to ensure she got the highest score.

She worked extra hard on consistency and remembering every detail during shooting.

On the training ground 300 bullets were fired every day. The smoke that resulted made Sun uncomfortable so she wore a gauze mask. But it was compromising her performance, and she eventually did without. Sometimes the shells that fell to the ground would bounce back up and hit her on the face, but she never flinched.

After a closed training session, Sun was shortlisted as the only woman on a six-person team representing the Shanghai force.

The actual competition was even tougher than the daily training because nerves could get in the way. “You must learn to keep a steady rhythm,” her coach told the team.

As the competition approached, Sun had reached a stage when even the slightest improvement was difficult to achieve. The coach told her to forget about scores and focus on firing every shot confidently and without distraction. Soon her scores were at an all-time high.

In addition to practical training, Sun had to prepare for a theory test in which contestants must answer 500 questions in 45 minutes.

In a practice test she failed to get a satisfactory score and she went back to her textbooks and studied late into the night.

Her diligence paid off.

The judges of the competition spoke highly of Sun’s performance in the final competition and team Shanghai ranked first among 37 teams from across the country. Sun won the special individual prize.

Although there aren’t many life-and-death matters within the community where she is based, small problems can possibly turn into big issues if not properly dealt with. This kind of work requires high efficiency as well as patience. Sun’s qualities as a shooter make her a perfect fit for handling these community matters.

Sun is proud of her achievements.

“The gun is a loyal friend in a sense that if you treat it well, it will perform well under pressure and never let you down,” she said.