Any time a police officer responds to a situation, it often goes in a completely different direction than they anticipate, but Gary high school students interested in law enforcement are getting a jump on how to react.
Those students on Tuesday showed off their burgeoning skills during a demonstration using a de-escalation training simulator with live-action footage that at least three Northwest Indiana police departments use at the Gary Area Career Center. The Gary Community School Corporation purchased the VirTra equipment through $200,000 in federal funding, GACC Career and Technical Director Derek Bodley said.
From behind a computer, Sophomore Aubrey Pusser-Shirley chose the situations her classmates and newly minted Gary Police officers would navigate. One situation was an office shooting; another was a human trafficking situation in which undocumented people were being transported in a box truck, and a third was a drunk-driving incident that turned violent.
All the situations ended up involving guns.
The partners, armed with prop weapons of their own, attempted to first assess the situation and then try to prevent an already volatile scenario from ending up in gunfire. As added stress, the partners were also outfitted with a device that signaled when they got shot; as in life, they were expected to “work through the pain.”
“If the (the student’s or officer’s) commands are good, we’ll let them win,” said Col. Richard Ligon, instructor for the course. ” But this is not a video game — this is a training tool.”
Gary Police Chief Derrick Cannon added that while an officer never wants to come to a situation and use deadly force, people need to understand that even a hint of deadly force from a civilian is an act from which they may not recover.
“We don’t want our officers to second-guess and end up on the opposite end,” Cannon said. “If there’s a member of the public here, we want them to know that at no point in time that when you engage with an officer, you should reach for a gun.”
Pusser-Shirley wants to pursue a career in Forensics and took an Intro to Psychology class before taking the Law Enforcement class. She’s one of three students who are trained to run the VirTra software.
“I like the hands-on experience of the class,” she said.
Samaria Graham, who’s also a sophomore, was thinking about law enforcement from a different angle: the attorney side, because she was concerned about the people who don’t have a good defense attorney in their corner. The class has strengthened her resolve, she said.
Senior Ja’Nyla Smith said she’s interested in becoming a police officer from the experience.
“I was excited but nervous because I’ve never shot a gun,” Ja’Nyla said. “I think people think police are trying to get them to do wrong, but some officers really do want to help. You just have to approach them like you want to be treated yourself.”
To give the students a taste of the other side of the law, Ligon said he’s working with U.S. District Judge Gretchen Lund to set up a mock trial at the U.S. District Courthouse in Hammond.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.