Virtual legality: Menlo cops get training on high-tech simulator Virtual legality: Menlo cops get training on high-tech simulator (November 12, 2003)

By Rebecca Wallace
Almanac Staff Writer

You're an off-duty police officer stopping to pick something up at a convenience store at night. Suddenly, a man runs in and holds up the clerk at gunpoint.

You have your gun and your badge. But you also have your young son at your side. What do you do?

Robert Jones decides to whisper to his young son to get down and stay quiet, and they stay hidden until the robbery is over. No one is hurt.

But what if you had decided to get involved? After all, this is just a training exercise in a high-tech simulator in the SRI parking lot in Menlo Park, where the scene is projected on a screen inside a trailer. And Mr. Jones is an instructor with the South Bay Regional Public Safety Training Consortium, which trains law enforcement officers throughout the area.

So Mr. Jones restarts the simulation. This time, when the miscreant runs in, Mr. Jones raises his gun and shouts, "Police officer! Get down!"

This might have stopped the robbery, but all at once the sickening sound of another man racking his shotgun comes from behind Mr. Jones and his son. The robber was not acting alone.

Sadly, the simulator scene is based on a real-life tragedy: a Los Angeles police officer's son was killed after the officer tried to stop a similar robbery, Mr. Jones said.

So the constant theme running through this training is that police work is about quick choices. Make the wrong choice and results can be tragic.

"It was one of the best, most realistic trainings that we've had in this area in quite a while," Detective Bill Massey of the Menlo Park Police Department says afterward. "We can go to the range and shoot our guns, but unless you have that adrenaline running where you have to make split-second decisions, it's not quite realistic."

Knives, guns and batons

During the simulators' month-long stint in Menlo Park, which ended last month, officers from the Menlo Park Police Department and other agencies used the machines. A driving simulator was also used to train officers and firefighters in pursuit and emergency response situations.

The program is funded by the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which receives the bulk of its money from traffic tickets and other criminal fines.

At a training last month, Mr. Jones gave an introduction to 10 officers in the dim light of the trailer. In the back, fellow instructor Doug Tozzini, a retired Brisbane police officer, was preparing to play his role. Mr. Tozzini monitors the actions of the officer and makes the machine react.

For example, an officer could order a charging suspect to stop, and the suspect might or might not. An officer could shoot a suspect and see him fall down. The simulator guns emit laser light, sound, and a tactile recoil.

"You can use any force option available to you," Mr. Jones tells the officers. "If you're using a stick (baton), be careful, especially the tall guys," he added with a grin, gesturing above his head. "That projector's like 7,500 bucks."

Another tactile treat could be in store for officers who get "shot": instructors can shoot them with white plastic balls.

The officers take their turns in the simulator. Jordan Boyd, a detective with the Broadmoor Police Department in northern San Mateo County, stands ready in front of the screen, where he sees a man fighting with his wife.

The man picks up a knife, and Detective Boyd is ready with his gun, but by talking firmly the detective gets him to put the knife down. Then while Detective Boyd is still talking, the man suddenly charges him with his fists. Without missing a beat, Detective Boyd whips out his baton.

Mr. Jones compliments Detective Boyd, suggesting only that he could have moved farther to the side to take cover.

Next up is Detective Massey, who spots a knife-wielding burglar in a darkened house. The suspect claims to be the house's resident, trying to fix the fusebox with the knife. But he keeps inching closer.

After Detective Massey repeatedly tells the man to drop the knife and put his hands behind his back, the man raises the knife in a way that could be threatening, and the detective shoots him in the chest.

Afterward, Detective Massey and Mr. Jones discuss what happened.

"I tried to put as much space between him and me as I could," Detective Massey says. "Even though his language was not threatening, his proximity was threatening."

"At some point he crosses that line," Mr. Jones agrees about the suspect.

Watching, the other officers concur. One says the scenario reminded him of a recent situation in which an officer shot a San Jose Vietnamese woman who had been holding a sharp cooking tool.

"That's exactly what this case would be," Detective Massey says.

Rookie with a gun

Taking cover or dropping to one knee to raise a gun, the officers have clearly been trained in these situations. But it's another matter entirely for a rookie.

Mr. Jones coaxes me, a writer who has never fired a gun, to give the simulator a try. I put on the heavy gun belt as Mr. Jones describes my situation: A woman is hitting her child in a park.

Not so dangerous, I think. "I'm not going to shoot a woman and her kid," I say. "Can't I use a baton?" Sure, Mr. Jones says. I can even use pepper spray.

Then he asks me if I speak Spanish. I ask if they have any French scenarios, but I am out of luck.

So I approach a park bench where the woman has just stopped hitting her child, and the little girl starts babbling frantically to me in Spanish. I try to see if the kid is all right and get caught up in trying to understand her, and before I know it the woman has pulled a gun out of her purse.

After I brilliantly exclaim, "She's shooting at me!" I recover enough to shoot back, and I hit her in the head.

"Good shot!" one of the officers says. I feel pretty cool, despite the fact that if the woman had been real I would have already been dead.

Mr. Jones explains that I should have paid attention to the woman's hand, which was in her purse the entire time. It also might have been a good idea to move, rather than standing motionless directly in the line of fire.

It had all happened so fast that I hadn't even noticed the mother's hand, or realized that the girl was saying, "Mi mama tiene un arma!" ("My mother has a gun!"), so clearly that even I could understand it once I wasn't full of adrenaline.

Detective Massey tells me later that as a police officer you learn to notice these kinds of details because you have to: "No two situations that you experience in this job are ever identical."