Simulator can give deputies a real workout

The Sheriff's Office's latest gizmo projects a crime scenario onto a screen. The officer can interact with it.

By BILL VARIAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 11, 2000

The dispatcher didn't offer much description, only that a man had been seen dropping a baby repeatedly.

Citrus County sheriff's Detective Mike Kilian checked it out. Spying the man crossing an alley, baby seat and baby under one arm, Kilian asked if he could speak to him for a moment.

The man, stumbling and slurring his words, told the detective to leave him alone. Then, reaching into the baby seat, he pulled out what looked like a long knife and went at Kilian.

After urging the man to stop, drop the knife and put down the baby, the man kept coming. Kilian fired one shot, striking him in the shoulder.

Was it the right thing to do? That can be debated.

But fortunately this confrontation didn't take place on the streets of Citrus County. Rather, it played out in a classroom at the Withlacoochee Technical Institute.

Kilian was demonstrating the latest gizmo of the Citrus County Sheriff's Office: an interactive video crime simulator that is the technology age's answer to the shooting range.

More like laser tag than an obstacle course with wooden, cut-out criminals, the so-called Firearms Automated Training System projects a scenario on a screen. The officer can interact with it.

Trainers change scenarios in real time based on how officers respond. And thanks to a handgun and pepper-type spray container equipped with a laser, trainers can even tell if officers hit their mark.

"It's probably as close as we can come (to the real thing) without having to put them in it," said Sgt. Vern Blevins, one of three sheriff's officials who train colleagues using the device.

The Sheriff's Office purchased its machine in July for $30,595 from an Atlanta company that specializes in making the interactive officer training equipment. It comes with a computer, projector and screen, along with a DVD containing nine potential crime scenarios based on real events.

There's a man spotted peeping in windows from his car that steps from his vehicle with a semi-automatic weapon. There's the domestic violence call in which a woman has supposedly cut her boyfriend's throat with a knife.

The officer is given a handgun similar to his service weapon and the pepper-styled spray can. He's expected to talk to the screen just as he would if responding to a real call. With a couple of taps on the keyboard, the trainer is able to change in real time the actions of the people on the screen.

The baby-toting drunk, for instance, will do anything from putting the baby down to pulling out his weapon then surrendering it.

The woman who has slashed her boyfriend with a knife reaches behind her back. Under one scenario, she curses the officer and pulls out a knife. In another she reaches for a liquor bottle and takes a swig.

Officers are counseled based on how they react. While most of the scenarios involve the potential for shooting, almost all allow for a peaceful resolution.

"As far as discretionary decisions -- shoot, don't shoot -- it definitely helps you," said Kilian, who is a member of the agency's SWAT-styled emergency response teams. "But if every (scenario) was shooting, I would say it's not realistic."

Indeed, Kilian, a nine-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, said he has never had to fire a gun.

Blevins said he talks to officers as much about what they say to the people on the screen as he does about how they shot. For intance, one officer recently told the man in the alley to drop the baby.

"I said, "Now do you really want him to drop the baby?' " he said.

All of the Sheriff's Office's 159 sworn officers will be expected to train on the equipment at least once a year, according to information provided by the agency. They will continue training on their duty weapons at the shooting range as well.

Some officers may use the FATS machine more often. Blevins said the equipment allows for additional training should an officer have a difficult time responding to a real crime. The FATS machine will let them practice.

Kim Dunn, manager of advertising and marketing for Firearm Training System Inc., the company the makes the training device, said her company has sold about 960 of the machines to law enforcement agencies in the United States. The company also has subsidiaries that sell similar equipment to retailers of hunting equipment, and to the military for tank and airplane training.

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