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Police Simulator Trains Officers on When to Use Force

The VirtTra V-300 wraps 300 degrees around users to force officers to choose in real time whether they should shoot suspects or use their Tasers or pepper-spray.

(TNS) -- Rookie police Officer Charles Johnson of the Norfolk, Va., Police Department charged into an office building where at least two gunmen, protected by body armor, were attacking workers.

As he ducked behind a cubicle wall, he saw a man in a tie slumped on the ground with what looked like a bullet wound to the gut.

Then he heard gunfire.

He heard screams as he approached a nearby office. A man scooted out on his back, begging for mercy from someone inside. Then the shooter emerged, an assault rifle pointed at the man's head.

Johnson fumbled for his gun but was too late. The man fatally shot the office worker then turned to Johnson and shot him to death, too.

The lights came on, and the blood, bad guys and gunfire were gone.

At 66, Johnson isn't a rookie. He isn't even a police officer. But the Neighborhood Watch block coordinator wanted to put himself in one's shoes Thursday when he tried the department's new $270,000 training simulator, designed to help officers make better decisions about using force.

This is precisely the place where Sgt. Jonathan Puckett wants officers to fail on a grand scale so they don't do it on the streets.

The Police Department bought the VirtTra V-300, which wraps 300 degrees around users, to force officers to choose in real time whether they should shoot suspects or use their Tasers or pepper-spray.

Police can make the generic scenarios more familiar. They've already loaded pictures of Norfolk City Hall and their firing range into the system. If one of their officers improperly shoots someone, they can take photos of the scene and re-create the situation so other officers can learn from it.

City Manager Marcus Jones paid for the simulator out of the city's general fund, Puckett said, adding that it costs less than a cent when an officer pulls the trigger in the simulator, and it's one-twenty-seventh the cost of firing a round on the range.

A VirTra training session involving a school shooting costs $7,500, which seems like a lot, Puckett said. But the other option is finding a school where they can do it in person, recruit a dozen role players, pay for fake gear and ammunition and lose a big chunk of manpower.

For all that, the price tag would be $50,000 to $60,000, Puckett said.

Police have retrofitted the same Glock handguns they use on the street with lasers and carbon dioxide canisters so they register on the VirTra screens while recoiling like regular service weapons. Trainers also have rigged rifles, Tasers and pepper-spray canisters to work with VirTra.

This simulator, more than anything else Puckett has seen, bridges the "great schism" between the controlled environment of the shooting range and life on the streets.

Cpl. Melinda Wray, a spokeswoman for Norfolk police, said she knew it was the real deal when one of the SWAT team members, a guy who usually doesn't get worked up unless a situation is real, emerged drenched in sweat.

"You get amped up," Wray said after going through a couple active-shooter scenarios. "You feel as if you're literally walking through the hallway of the school. You get immersed."

Johnson said he felt pretty confident that he could convince the woman with the syringe in another scenario to give up, and that he wouldn't have to resort to violence.

The active shooters in the office?

"That opened my eyes. An officer has so many things going on around him or her at the time, I don't know how they make 'the best move' on time," Johnson said. "I can see where an officer could accidentally - not thinking - shoot the wrong person."

Sometimes officers don't need to use their equipment. In some situations, trainers on the sidelines who run a virtual scenario push an officer to talk with someone who's having a psychotic episode and resolve it. All the while, trainers are assessing an officer's behavior and changing the game accordingly.

VirTra gives trainers many options to throw at officers, who may respond to something as mundane as a trespassing call or as intense as a school shooting.

"All in one system, all in one training, in 30 to 40 minutes, an officer goes through the whole gamut of force," Puckett said.

In one scenario, the officer rolls up to a scene and spots a man who is manhandling a woman.

Trainers can have the man run off or, if they think the officer isn't being assertive enough, they can make the man attack. If the man flees, the woman who was with him whips out a drug needle, waves it around as a weapon and comes at the officer.

"Officer" Johnson talked her down, convincing her to drop the syringe. He resolved the situation without violence.

And that's what officers should be doing unless they have no other choice, Puckett said.

"It's all about sanctity of life," Puckett said. "That woman's life in that scenario is just as important as that officer's."

So police are changing their playbook. Instead of telling officers to charge into a situation, they're teaching them to "tactically retreat," or stay far enough away to figure out what's going on.

More information and distance gives officers more options.

"If we can teach officers in the academy or officers young in their career that just because they're not applying force... it doesn't mean they're not working," Puckett said. "They're constantly working to find a way to win."

What's a win? Puckett asked before answering his own question.

Everybody goes home.

©2015 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.