Yep.
I have been trying to develop and nurture this skill for some time, and it isn’t easy to do when there generally isn’t a threat or doing your job isn’t dependent on it.
I am told that a good part of it is recognizing that something is out of place, something that doesn’t belong...for a soldier, that might be a street normally bustling with women and children that is deserted, etc.
So I found it interesting that yesterday, my wife and I were driving somewhere, and passed a carpet store and my mind picked up something without me even realizing it...we passed a carpet store, and at a glance I had seen a young teenage girl standing idly outside the store.
It registered as an image in my brain without a conscious thought, but...almost as soon as we passed...the image popped up in my mind again. And again, almost like an afterimage of a bright light when you close your eyes. Then I began thinking of it consciously.
It was a hot day, temps in the eighties, and she was wearing a heavy coat, also, something else was strange...something about her legs.
I turned to my wife and said “Did you notice that young girl standing in front of that carpet store? Was there something odd about her?”
My wife said yes, she had noticed, and thought it was odd for her to be wearing such a heavy coat. And she said something about her legs seemed odd, then she realized they were leggings of some kind...then she mentioned there was a dance studio nearby that trains dancers, and that the girl had her feet in “position one”...I had to laugh! But my mind had registered the girl, and there was something odd, and it had stuck in my mind.
As I thought of it, it occurred to me that there are people who develop the capability to register that thing that “sticks in the mind” and they train themselves to be wired into it. In my case, it was a young girl that did it, but in a police officer or soldier, it could be the apparel someone is wearing, a look on a face, an odd car parked in an unusual way, an object or package in a crowded square that makes that “afterimage” and their mind doesn’t waste time with a nagging feeling, but instead starts analyzing it right away and putting it into context.
That must be situational awareness.