Simulated scenarios

Portland police officers had a busy evening Thursday.
They made a variety of traffic stops.
They responded to multiple domestic disputes, including one return trip to the same residence.
They looked into a call about a suspicious group of teenagers gathered behind a house.
They hurried to a request for help at a warehouse where a former employee was causing trouble.
And they rushed to provide backup to another officer whose partner was being held hostage by a suspect.
The events certainly don’t represent a typical night for the local police force, especially given the fact that they played out in a conference room on the second floor of city hall.
It was all part of training for a group of Portland officers working with a use of force judgmental simulator.
“Instead of just firearms training, it also gives us a real-life experience,” said Portland police chief Nathan Springer, noting that the department undergoes such training once a year.
Officers will continue to use the simulator, which includes more than $80,000 worth of equipment provided by Tactical Edge Protective Services of Warsaw, through the weekend as they train for how to handle a variety of situations they might encounter on the job. The cost is $3,200 for five days, but that is covered by the department’s insurance.
Each scenario plays out on a projection screen in front of one or more officers, who are carrying weapons such as pepper spray, stun guns and firearms. (All of the weapons are authentic, but modified, with the firearms “shooting” via a canister of compressed air.)
As the officers arrive on the scene, they react to whatever they see happening in front of them — from a routine traffic stop, to a group of teenagers talking, to a couple fighting, to a woman being held at gunpoint. As they do so, another officer observing and working at a computer adjusts the scenario accordingly.
In some cases, the situations are resolved peacefully, with the subjects calming down and complying with the officers’ requests. In others, the danger escalates to a point requiring use of force, sometimes deadly.
“The gun is a lethal weapon, and it’s our last choice in the force continuum,” said Springer. “We prefer verbal. If that doesn’t work, then we go to light hands on, then hard hands on, and then non-lethal like the Taser, pepper spray. Your gun is always the last thing you want to go to.”
One of the most obvious differences between the officers who went through scenarios Thursday and recent graduates of the department’s citizens’ academy also taking part was the frequency of commands.
Officers tended to be authoritative, consistently repeating their commands over and over in an attempt to gain control of a situation. Non-officers were generally more quiet, less communicative.
Repetition is key, Portland’s officers said, because those involved in such incidents are unlikely to respond to a first, second or even third request, in part because of the adrenaline involved.
“You lose a lot of your senses,” said Ryan Moore, who has been a full-time officer in Portland for eight years. “You lose a lot of your sensory perception.
“It might take until the 15th time you tell them to get on the ground until they actually hear it and realize what you’re saying.”
The simulator includes hundreds of different scenarios, all of which can lead to different outcomes based on the actions of the officers. The incidents occur at a variety of locations and with a diverse group of suspects in terms of gender, height, weight, age, race and sexual orientation.
That’s especially important given the recent media attention to situations involving excessive force by police.
“In law enforcement, we deal with everybody, not just one group of the population,” said Springer, “so it’s important that the officers always prepare for when they have to deal with maybe someone that they normally do not deal with.”
After each scenario is complete, it can be played back, allowing the officers to review their actions.
Was there anything they would have changed? Was there something they missed? If they had tried a different tactic, would the situation have turned out better or worse?
The program will also show officers where their weapon was pointed throughout the incident, as well as the location of each shot taken, if any, and whether those shots were misses, non-lethal hits or lethal hits.
“It makes sure, are we actually doing what we’re supposed to be doing, focusing where our weapons need to be focused,” said Stephenson. “It actually helps us to better train, to make sure we’re shooting where we’re supposed to.”
Moore, the department’s firearms expert, ran into more than one situation in which he had to make a choice whether to fire his weapon at a suspect holding an individual at gunpoint. In each case he did, delivering a fatal shot and saving the life of the hostage.
“My confidence with a weapon is high. But you also have to … judge where you’re going to be able to take the shot,” said Moore. “You have to be very confident with the weapon and know exactly where it’s going to be placed. It takes hours and hours and hours and hours of practice, whether it be with a simulator like this, or the best practice is just out on the range.”
It’s a level of confidence he built because he has “been shooting since basically he could walk,” and he hopes he would have if he forced into a similar situation in real life.
But it’s difficult to know for sure.
“It’s hard telling under stress,” said Chad Chowning, a 20-year veteran as a reserve officer. “Under a real stress situation could you make that shear shot past the side, you just never know. It’s one you have to have the confidence in, but whether you could in real life, you’ll never know until you have to cross that line.”
“That’s why we train, for situations like this,” said Stephenson. “It’s just the constant training …”