By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
Thursday, Hays Mayor Shaun Musil and City Council members Reese Barrick and Mason Ruder had a first-hand look at the MILO simulator being used for training for members of the Hays Police Department over the past two weeks.
The system gives participants a more holistic approach to training, incorporating various situations that officers may face in the line of duty in an interactive virtual environment.
“I love this training you're doing,” Musil said. “This is almost a real-life scenario.”
“This is about as close as we can get,” Hays Police Department Chief Don Scheibler told the participants. “That's the best thing about it.”
During the session, Hays Police Department Lt. Tim Greenwood and Sgt. Phillip Gage demonstrated training scenarios, allowing the attendees to see the system in action.
Officers used the system while on shift at various times throughout the two-week training window with the simulator.
“They are able to come in, secure their tools and their live weapons and do a safety check with the instructor,” Greenwood said. “And then we set them up with the MILO tools, which includes handguns patrol rifle, the taser, and the OC spray and baton.”
They then go through one of the hundreds of scenarios available.
Trainers note positive and negative actions as the officers run through the situations and give immediate feedback.
“We want them to make a mistake here,” Greenwood said. “We'd rather have them screw up in our training environment and not be stressed about ‘Oh, I got something on my jacket because I made a mistake in a scenario.”
And immediate playback shows detailed information about response time and firing accuracy.
“They'll go through a scenario, and then immediately following the scenario, we'll rewatch the scenario,” Greenwood said.
During the debrief, they can then offer guidance.
“We're able to see how they reacted because – believe it or not, they'll have a reaction – and we will say, ‘You know what, you jumped three steps to your left, or you didn't even have a gun in your hand and you should.”
But he also noted virtual simulations are only a part of the training program.
“This isn't an end-all training,” Greenwood said. “They've had these for a lot of years, but it's a complement to training. You still need to do reality-based training.”
It can, however, simulate quickly changing situations, which is vital to making decisions in the field.
“As a perfect example, we recently (responded to) a home invasion with a knife and was stabbing people,” Schiebler said. “We went from going to calls for loud noise disturbances and alcohol violations to now we're going into a call where a guy is trying to kill people. And we're entering this house with one suspect, but we also have victims and other people in the situation. And we have had to make those kinds of decisions, and that's where that confidence comes from, that ability to do that.”
After Gage demonstrated two scenarios, the visitors took turns at various situations, from school shootings to traffic stops, allowing them to experience the simulator first-hand and provide a bit of entertainment as they attempted to mount the response of a trained law enforcement officer.
While several first attempts ended with less than favorable outcomes, on a second round, there was marked improvement, showing the training system's value directly to the city leaders.
“We've seen improvement throughout the process,” Scheibler said. “It was a struggle initially, but by the end of it, we'll do what we needed to do. And again, we're okay making mistakes (during training) and gaining some confidence.”