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Warren students train at police academy
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
It’s not every day that you walk into a school building, hear gunfire, see students running in panic, then see a young man holding a gun aimed at you.
But if you’re a police officer, it’s one of thousands of scenarios you might encounter during a career, and the scary thing is, you only have a split-second to decide what to do.
Students participating in the six-week Citizen’s Police Academy got to see that scenario and several others first-hand last week at the Warren Police Department as part of their training.
The 15 students, average citizens who signed up to learn more about police work so they can better assist police in doing their jobs, divided into three groups.
Some rode along with police officers for two hours. Some sat with dispatchers in the 911 center. And the third group experienced simulated situations while holding a nearly-real Glock 17 handgun such as Warren police officers use. The guns don’t fire real bullets.
In one exercise, the gun-toting students were shown pictures of people holding various things: a gun, a police badge, a baseball bat. The students had three seconds to decide whether to shoot or not shoot.
“As you can see, three seconds doesn’t give you much time to determine if it’s a gun, a badge or something else,” said Geoff Fusco, the Warren police officer giving the instruction.
“Then the hard thing is the armchair quarterback,” Fusco said of individuals who second-guess a police officer or someone else as to whether he or she made the right decision. “These are split-second decisions.”
Police officers are second-guessed on all sorts of decisions, Fusco said, such as whether the amount of force used was appropriate for the situation.
Officers are taught about the use of force continuum, meaning that officers should increase the amount of force used on a suspect as the suspect elevates his force.
As these situations develop, an officer has to decide what use of force is most appropriate — his voice, his arms, the stun gun, police baton, firearm. What if the suspect has a knife? What if there are other officers nearby?
Students Gary Stephens and Marye Hanshaw stood with their simulated police weapons in hand while the simulator showed a sex offender as he walked toward them. When he got uncomfortably close, one student fired.
“Who shot him?” Fusco asked.
“I think I did,” Hanshaw said with a tiny voice full of doubt, adding, “I don’t think this is the job for me.”
“The best thing about this is it’s a game,” Fusco said of the simulation. “We do the same thing with the officers” to prepare them for these situations, he said.
Student Lynn Parker, who teaches carrying-concealed-weapons classes, said he wishes he had access to this type of simulator for his students.
“I wish I could teach my students when to shoot and when not to shoot,” he said. The amount of time he has with his students doesn’t allow for a lot of time on that, Parker said.
Beverly-Jean Pollard, executive director of the Warren Urban Minority Alcohol and Drug Abuse Outreach Program, said 911 dispatchers have to make a lot of split-second decisions as well, such as determining whether a person’s screams indicate a serious emer- gency or are non-serious.
“It’s an awesome task,” she said after sitting with a dispatcher for two hours.
The class will graduate Nov. 17, and a second class of 15 students will begin six lessons Dec. 1. The police department and the Weed and Seed Program are sponsoring the class and still are accepting applications.