Mt. Vernon police officers are now using state of the art technology and virtual reality to train for real life scenarios.
MT. VERNON (WSIL) - Mt. Vernon police officers are now using state of the art technology and virtual reality to train for real life scenarios. The technology is called Virtual Reality Use of Force Simulation.
Once the gear is on, the operating officer initiates a scenario, and the participating officer is immersed in a new environment. That new scenario could be a bar scene, an active shooter at a school or as generic as a traffic stop.
"There's one scenario where you're on a rooftop parking garage," explained Mt. Vernon Assistant Police Chief, Robert Brands. "You can go to the edge, and it really does feel like you're up high, like if you went over that ledge that you would fall. So, it really is realistic as far as the environment is concerned and being able to look around and walk around."
Brands said, this immersive training gives officers life-like experience in a virtual world - to help make educated decisions in the real world.
"Where, if they've made a decision similar to that before, they can make quicker decisions and correct decisions," he said. "And we'd rather them make mistakes in training than to make a mistake in a real-life situation."
The technology runs the gamut including interaction with the suspect, physical exchanges, even speaking back and forth with one another or actual use of force. And once action has taken place, the officers can learn from their mistakes.
"It's like an instant replay function, where they can look from a different perspective or a different angle," Brands explained. "They can see if they were positioned correctly or why they did what they did, and hopefully correct what they saw they did wrong."
So, the officers don't make those mistakes when the time counts.
"Cause we're human; we make mistakes," Brands said. "But we don't want to make mistakes in a critical incident when someone's life is at stake. We want those mistakes to be made in training, correct those mistakes, then hopefully they make the right decision when the time counts."
The Rolland Lewis Community Building is only a temporary home for the equipment. When the new police department is completely built, this gear will be included in a dedicated training room.