Heart rate quickens. Pupils dilate. Body temperature increases. Adrenaline is pumping. This is the physiological response of any police officer facing an escalated situation. But it also describes an officer engaged in effective training.
Stress can affect how an officer reacts and responds to situations in critical moments. For this reason, it’s vital that departments have a comprehensive training curriculum integrating marksmanship training and judgmental training scenarios as well as live-fire components.
Today’s virtual firearms training or simulation systems can immerse an officer into a true-to-life training scenario that reproduces the same stress, ultimately making officers more effective and better prepared the next time they encounter an escalated event.
Today’s Intelligent Systems
Many who hear the term “simulation training” still think of Simunition, or role playing. This type of training is incredibly valuable and should be part of an integrated training program, but for the purposes of this article “simulation” refers to a virtual firearms training simulator that provides marksmanship and judgmental use-of-force training.
In the early days of simulation, it was only “shoot or don’t shoot.” In fact, the first system was nothing more than a light projector with a picture swapped out manually. Today’s intelligent simulation systems are designed to provide real-time data for after-action reporting on how the shooter performed. The system recognizes officer presence, verbal commands, empty-handed techniques, as well as use of baton, chemical spray, Taser and deadly force.
Along with an effective trainer, today’s training technology can escalate or de-escalate a training scenario based on the pre-determined lesson plan of the instructor and how the student is actually engaging the scenario. These responses, similar to shooting at a target and seeing where the bullet hits, can be seen in replay.
But in simulation training it’s not as much about how students react, it’s about why they do what they do and their ability to explain their decisions.
Today’s virtual training systems are about recreating an environment where an officer is forced to make the same split-second decisions in a non-lethal training environment that they may have to make in a potentially lethal or escalated situation out in the field. What’s critical with these systems or tools is that they are used to their full potential for both marksmanship and judgmental training, and are integrated into a full training curriculum.
Training to its Fullest Potential
These systems, such as Meggitt Training Systems’ FATSL7, provide marksmanship training for determining firearms-related issues and abilities, weapons handling, qualification, remediation and training between qualifications along with judgmental use-of-force training.
In “lanes” mode (marksmanship), the shooter runs through a pre-determined course of fire on various static or moving imagery, depending upon the training curriculum of the department.
“Very simply, from a weapons handling perspective, you are not expending rounds, it’s a teaching tool,” Lt. Bryan Hickey of the Suwanee (Ga.) Police Department says. “You can explain and then immediately train the officer on the basic fundamentals of shooting.
“The officers can see their shots in real time. They can see how they are handling and firing their weapon, as well as muzzle location and other critical elements in good shooting fundamentals. With the assistance of an instructor, all of the information that the system and the weapon provide help shooters self-diagnose without expending several hundred rounds trying to figure out what they are doing wrong.”
Suwanee PD uses tetherless, Bluetooth-enabled weapons known as BlueFire with their system. These are actual weapons purchased from the gun manufacturer and then stripped of their firing components and replaced with electronics that provide real-time data to the shooter and instructor through the system.
The wireless (or tetherless) weapons are critical to true-to-life training. Training officers have to ask themselves, “Why would we want officers to train with plastic weapons or with magazines that have limitless rounds when that is not the reality out in the field?” This simply leads to what is called negative training.
Because BlueFire simulators are actual weapons, they are true to form, fit and function of the duty weapons the officers use in the field. The weapons weigh the same, are balanced the same and all the components, such as the safety and trigger, are in the exact same position as they are on their duty weapon. Another element to consider is the smart magazine. Officers are operating in real life, not in the movies, and they do not have magazines that never empty, so they should not train that way.
One of the primary benefits of tetherless weapons is that they enable officers to move freely within the training space and still send and receive feedback on the shooter. Tethered weapons are connected by a cable that sends data to and from the weapon, but restricts movement to a fixed location and distance. Both weapon systems have their advantages, but most agencies are moving to the wireless technology.
How it Works
While many departments use simulation systems for both marksmanship training and scenario-based training, the majority use them for judgmental use-of-force training.
“The system gives the trainer the ability to induce stress and see how the officer interacts with participants within the video scenario and, depending on how the officer engages the suspect, as the trainer I can manipulate the situation by escalating or de-escalating,” Hickey says.
The system is simply a projector, a laptop with a touchscreen or tablet, a screen on which the scenario is projected and the weaponry. Officers stand facing the screen and engage the scenario as they would based on departmental protocol using all available tools.
Using the tablet or touchscreen, the trainer controls the scenario by reacting to the officer’s commands. If the officer reacts appropriately, the officer can choose to select a “branch” where the assailant complies. Or the trainer could choose to see how the officer would react to a use-of-force situation and select a branch where the officer needs to engage using Taser, chemical spray or baton.
All systems come with a library of scenarios that range from a traffic stop to an active shooter. The scenarios are filmed from the officer’s perspective, along with all possible outcomes or reactions. These “branches” are the options that a trainer has during the training.
“One of the reasons we chose this particular system is because it has the ability to edit scenarios that we film within our department,” Hickey says. “We have been doing significant active shooter training within our community and we plan to create an active shooter scenario in the very near future that we hope will be combined with a live training exercise.
“The scenarios on the system typically end with the officer using force or compliance, but I take it a couple steps ahead,” he continues. “If we have a situation where the officer engages and uses force, I do not allow the officer to stop once they engage and ‘end the scenario.’ At that point, as the trainer, I take over and I become the suspect because I want them to carry through as they would on the street.”
This type of hands-on approach is what makes these systems effective. Lt. Hickey has taken an approach with his training that not only uses the system and all its features, but takes it to the next level by adding in all phases of an incident. Different departments and trainers have different styles, but departments that integrate classroom instruction, role playing, simulation and live fire see the greatest success.
Blended Training
Hickey reinforces the importance of a blended training curriculum. The order of integration depends on the training officer’s curriculum, so some departments will use simulation first and then move into a live-fire scenario, while others might use live fire first and then use the simulator to reinforce and/or remediate.
Within the live-fire component, officers are trained to handle a deadly weapon by incorporating: knowledge (classroom), skills (range time and teaching how to fire) and abilities (range time and practicing proper reload techniques, quick target identification and reaction). This also holds true with intermediate weapons such as baton, chemical spray, taser and empty-handed techniques. Training officers can incorporate these knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) through the same core path as weapons training. But it’s through these evolving technologies that officers are able to practice, test, remediate and be accurately evaluated through the use of simulation training.
“Training is what you make of it,” Hickey says. “With our new facility, we now have the means to do things. It comes down to maximizing the capabilities of what you have within your department or a shared facility. Putting officers under stress is critical. This is what prepares them for situations down the road. The officer encounters a similar situation out on patrol and thinks, ‘I have already experienced something similar to this in training’ and now the step of reacting becomes instantaneous. I begin each training by reinforcing that ‘You are going to train like this is the real thing. This is not just another exercise. This is going to indicate how you are going to react when it comes down to it.’”
How to Begin
Every department needs to look at their current training program and ask: Is my current training meeting expectations? Are my officers better prepared, more knowledgeable and do they possess better skills for what they will face in the field? Is my current training hampered by minimum standards, costs to maintain or lack of administrative support?
Once a department has a sense for where it is going and what it wants to accomplish, they can then begin the process of determining what systems and facilities are needed and how they can be funded.
Hickey, for example, says the new Suwanee facility was funded through a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) within their community, but he added that grant funding is another area being investigated and is a viable option for other agencies.
According to Hickey, the department and the community have already seen value.
“We built the facility in a part of town that needed to be revitalized because we wanted to benefit the community as a whole,” he says. “From a departmental perspective, the simulation system allows us to train the officers during their regular shifts, which cuts down on overtime and provides flexibility for officers on a completely opposite schedule. We also see savings on costs associated with ammunition. Overall, it’s training done right.”