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Police train with 21st Century technology	2008-11-13 00:00:00
Written by Marla Hoffman    THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2008   Imagine you are a police officer on patrol. Suddenly, a pedestrian flags you down and tells you there is someone in trouble. You approach the scene; you hear yelling; you come around a corner and see someone at gun point. Your instincts kick into gear. Everything from your training has been building to this one pivotal moment. This kind of situation, and others in which someone’s life is at risk, are scenarios that are familiar to police officers across the country. Modern police departments are taking steps to train their officers to properly handle every sort of situation that comes along. The Monroe Police Department hired Grey Wolf Training Specialists to train officers in a virtual reality setting in two sessions over two recent days. Grey Wolf, a Shelton-based company, specializes in virtual reality firearms training for law enforcement and the military. Without leaving headquarters, the Monroe officers were able to hone their skills in high stress simulated situations, such as armed robberies, domestic violence and aggravated assault. Each scenario was enacted by real actors and projected onto a screen. The instructor was able to manipulate each scene, and the officers could respond accordingly. Based on the verbal commands and reactions of the officers to any one of the more than 200 scenes, the instructor was able to have the suspect engage in violence, or perhaps, follow commands and allow himself to be arrested. “Verbalizations during the scenarios are key to the instructor making the suspects react,” said Bryan Williams, Grey Wolf CEO and director of training. Williams said he would be working with the Monroe Police Department and filming scenarios in Monroe to reflect situations likely to occur in the community. Many of the scenes that Grey Wolf is currently using to train officers were filmed in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Williams said community specific scenes would be beneficial for the Monroe officers. Monroe police Lt. Brian McCauley said the department was working with Williams and his crew to film scenes at sites such as Masuk High School, providing for an even closer-to-reality situation for the officers to train. “The great thing about training in a virtual setting is if it happens in real life you’ll be able to react more quickly, maybe even fast enough to save someone’s life,” said Williams. Adrenaline rush Williams said the system he uses, called FATS, Fire Arms Training System, is designed to help improve responses. The situations the officers encounter are in schools, on the street, in homes and in parks, to name a few. The officers in the scene have split seconds to respond to a threat, and if they don’t respond quick enough they could get shot themselves. Included with the system is a hostile fire system, where small foam balls are shot back at the officers when the scene calls for it, simulating a suspect shooting back at them. The system does not use live ammunition. Instead, the air pressured Glock 17 department issue pistols are hooked up to Bluetooth technology. This way, when the officer shoots at the screen, the angle and position of the muzzle is traced into the system. Aim and precision are key, said Williams. “After the scene is over we can replay the scene so the officers can see where they need improvement, and can judge their own reaction time and aim,” he said. During the replay, the officers can follow the trail of their own weapon during the scene. They can also see how many shots they fired, how many hits and how many lethal hits. The situations the officers find themselves in provide better training than a shooting range, for instance, McCauley said. “The situations get your heart rate going and your blood pressure up,” he said, “which makes it different than shooting at range with paper targets. “With this, you are as close as you can get to the real thing. They have to pay attention to where the suspect’s hands are, notice their body language and aggressiveness. “You can’t forget basic safety and always have to watch for the next threat,” he added. It’s all about timing, Williams said. “The way the scenes go in the system is a good indication of how fast things can go in real life,” Christopher Gay, Grey Wolf president and director of operations, said that better training decreases liability in real life scenarios. According to Gay, Grey Wolf trains all different types of military, law enforcement, private security, and private citizens at its Shelton facility on Bridgeport Avenue. The Monroe Police Department afforded its first on-site training session. Grey Wolf has only been in business a short time but has already developed a large clientele, including corporations hiring for team building exercises and police officers who want additional training. “One of the best things is it is a mobile system,” Gay said, “which is great for departments like Monroe’s, who have to rotate staff during a shift to allow everyone a chance to participate.” The system costs about $800 to $1,000 per day, a figure that Gay said was lower than training at a live range. “The war and the demand for ammunition is high right now,” he said, “which has raised the costs. “Training on this system for a couple days is more cost effective.”
Cops get high-tech firearms training	2008-11-08 00:00:00
By JOHN BURGESON Staff writer 11/08/2008   MONROE -- You're a cop on patrol in a small shopping plaza. You come across a teenager with a brick in his left hand. You order him to drop the brick, which he does. But then he reaches for something in his back pocket. What should you do? He might be reaching for a weapon, but he also might be going for his wallet. To complicate matters, three of his friends might be nearby, resistant and full of bluster. In the not-too-distant past, the training for such a scenario would have been largely on-the-job, but now there's a sophisticated virtual-reality training device that gives police a chance to make mistakes without putting themselves -- or anyone else -- in danger. "These are all high-liability situations, and if you make the wrong decision, you could either get hurt or you could kill an innocent person and get the town into a major lawsuit," said Capt. Michael Flick. Officers from both the Monroe and Trumbull police departments participated in the training session that took place Thursday, and a second session is scheduled today. The training comes in the wake of a raid this spring on an Easton home by a heavily armed squad of officers from several area police departments, including Monroe and Trumbull, during which an unarmed man was fatally shot. The May 17 raid by the Southwest Regional Emergency Response Team resulted in the death of Gonzalo Guizan, 33, of Norwalk. Guizan was visiting the home of a friend on Dogwood Drive in Easton, where police believed there was a stash of illegal drugs.   A Trumbull police officer involved in the fatal shooting, Officer Brian Weir, was put on leave after the incident for a few days. A Monroe officer, Michael Sweeney, a seven-year veteran of the department, also fired his weapon at Guizan, who was said to have charged at the officers. State Police are still investigating the shooting. Lt. Brian McCauley said this week's Grey Wolf video training sessions were not scheduled in reaction to the fatal raid, but to augment similar training provided by State Police. "Because of the demand, we don't get to use the state's system too frequently," he said. "And because of the war, ammunition for training is hard to come by." The virtual-reality training was provided by Grey Wolf Training Specialists of Shelton. Its system consists of a live-action video projected onto a screen with which police officers can interact. The officers can "fire" at the screen using Glock sidearms, modified to shoot a laser beam, not bullets. Compressed air gives the weapons a simulated recoil. The Grey Wolf system costs police departments between $800 to $1,000 per day. Its equipment costs more than $100,000. The handguns alone, which typically cost about $650 in a gun shop, cost more than $7,500 to modify, according to the company. The system is set up in a darkened room. Police officers are asked to respond to the scenario as they would in real life. If they fire at a suspect , the replay shows whether they used deadly force, missed the intended target, wounded the suspect or hit an innocent bystander. It will even show whether the suspect was "killed" unnecessarily, such as if he was in the act of dropping his weapon or attempting to surrender. In the replay, the screen displays where an officer's weapon was pointed at all times. Dialogue adds a measure of reality, and the scenarios unfold rapidly. The officers participating in the exercise are encouraged to talk back, such as ordering suspects to keep their hands in sight. There's also a device that shoots foam-rubber balls back at the cop. Flick said Grey Wolf will be filming new scenarios including a "hostage situation" at Monroe's Masuk High School. Existing scenarios include a belligerent subway turnstile jumper, an officer held at gunpoint, a man with an assault rifle in a car and an angry landlord with a shotgun. "Officers can go either way -- some are over eager, some are too passive," said Bryan S. Williams, Grey Wolf's CEO and president. Officers trained by Grey Wolf are critiqued by the firm's staffers, the system itself and a police firearms specialist, McCauley said. "The system is great for simulating close-quarters situations," he said. "It shows exactly where the officer is pointing the muzzle of his weapon at all times."