AMOZOC DE MOTA: The mock village perched on a hill in central Mexico looks like a Hollywood set, with a main square surrounded by a hollow town hall, a church and a school.
At the petrol station, a heated argument between two men in a pick-up truck ends with one shooting the other dead, followed by a fiery explosion in the back of the vehicle.
Officers wielding fake assault rifles swoop in, tackle a suspect near a gazebo and handcuff another inside a supermarket. Crime scene investigators arrive to collect evidence.
But the officers are not actors on a film set. They are actual police officers in training.
Welcome to the US-funded police academy in Amozoc de Mota, Puebla state, home to the "tactical village", one of a handful in Mexico where federal, municipal and state officers are getting much-needed training.
The three-year-old, state-of-the-art facility is a key part of US-Mexican efforts to transform the country's much-maligned police forces, which have battled allegations of brutality and collusion with drug cartels.
"We have effective police officers, but we also have bad police. It's irritating because we have people who do their work properly," said Ricardo Escamilla Montes, 34, an officer from the central city of Celaya on a two-week course.
The academy has trained more than 16,000 agents from the country's 32 states since opening in May 2012, with $17 million spent by Puebla state and $5 million by the United States.
It is part of the $2.3 billion Washington has earmarked for training and equipment since the two countries signed the Merida Initiative against organized crime in 2008.
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