Improvements to training are supposed to more scenario-based, how to deal with people with mental illnesses and how officers can understand their own implicit biases.
DeWine’s task force recommended 40 hours of mandatory yearly training (up from four hours) but the compromise was 11 hours in FY16 and 20 hours in FY17.
“I hope that once we start down that track, then we can — after these two years — continue to increase the hours,” DeWine said.
DeWine said scenario-based training — computer simulations with many variables that change depending on the officer’s actions — is “as close to the real world as we could make it.”
For the officers of one Butler County police force, having the ability to train on an in-house electronic firearms simulator means maintaining and sharpening response time and decision-making capabilities on a regular basis.
“You’re getting a perception where they’re recognizing things, scenarios and situations, threats, much more rapidly,” said Capt. Brian Rebholz of the West Chester Police Department.
The simulator, which is similar to the one employed by both Dayton and Cincinnati police departments, allows officers to train and react to more than 1,000 split-second decision scenarios, according to Sgt. Jamie Hensley, a West Chester police weapons instructor.
Those scenarios range from routine traffic stops and domestic violence calls to bank robberies or school shooter situations. Outcomes may be altered based on an officer’s reaction to a particular scenario.
The device is a “judgmental decisional trainer,” not just a use of force or firearms simulator, Hensley said.
“It’s used to enhance officers’ training and decisional training, particularly in the use of force incidents to enhance their ability to make rapid decisions in rapidly evolving situations,” Hensley said.
Each scenario gauges reaction time and allows instructors to provide feedback through video playback, examining and question each step of a scenario with an officer.
“Not every situation we come into is a lethal force encounter and we want to train the officer for that, as well,” Rebholz said.
While officers can redo a scenario until he or she masters a response, that scenario can be modified numerous ways to produce countless variables.
“It doesn’t become a video game where they just become conditioned to respond to whatever is thrown at them,” Rebholz said.
When a situation occurs in the course of an officer’s actual shift, such as the 2007 shooting of a West Chester police sergeant during a traffic stop on Cincinnati-Dayton Road near Interstate 75, West Chester police can then go back and reenact it on video for the rest of the department to undergo as “a learning process,” Rebholz said.
Although officers can request time on the simulator, firearms instructors on various shifts don’t wait for them to request it.
“It’s not uncommon for them in the course of a day if they have downtime, to bring those guys in to do some scenarios,” Rebholz said. “In the past … we tried to make arrangements with Cincinnati police to bring theirs up to our agency and have the thing set up for a couple of days maybe once a year, or every other year, to get our guys through that.”
The township paid the $48,800 price tag for the device and its warranty in 2011, and each time West Chester Police Department renews that warranty it receives new scenarios to add to the simulator.
Having a simulator in-house at the disposal of West Chester Police Department means not only being able to train at any given time, but also not having to worry about adverse weather conditions or expending ammunition.
“You’re able to reduce the amount of cost associated with firearms training,” Rebholz said.
The in-house simulator also eliminates the logistical hassle of police having to schedule an appointment with an instructor at a specific time and the time it take to transport police to an off-site training facility.
Besides gauging responses to modified and brand new scenarios, the simulator also allows police to keep their skill set sharp.
“I can draw my gun a thousand times over the course of several days right here … in front of the simulator,” Rebholz said. “I had a new holster and … I went back and began to train with that holster before I carried it. It’s a way to reinforce the training and the exposure to a particular weapon and holstering system.”
The simulator’s faux guns and rifle mirror the firearms police carry in both look, feel and weight, and even include CO2 canister to provide recoil action after a shot is fired.
Instructors will look to provide the widest array of situations available when training an officer, Rebholz said, likening law enforcement to an insurance agency.
“We’re going to prepare for the worst and go from there,” Rebholz said. “You want to be able to train for that so that you can react to it when you face it and … it’s not the first time they’ve seen it.”
Standing on a firing line and firing at a paper target is one way of training, one that works on marksmanship, Hensley said, “but the ability to make good, sound decisions in a high-stress encounter, you have to get their stress levels elevated.”
Any surrounding agency that wants to use the device is welcome to come in to West Chester Police Department and benefit from the same training that its own officers undergo, Hensley said.
Staff Writer Mark Gokavi contributed to this report.
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