My Experience With a Firearms Training Simulator

Tuesday evening I had the pleasure to test out a state-of-the-art simulator that the Algonquin police use for training.

Sgt. Andrew Doles, the officer in charge of firearm training for the department, explained that police regularly conduct two types of training: marksmanship and judgmental.

Marksmanship training is exactly as it sounds. They work on their aim and accuracy in a gravel pit off Route 31. For their judgmental training, they use a simulation machine manufactured by Meggit, a company that develops and manufactures virtual-training capabilities and live fire training systems.

The brand-new training machine was purchased by North East Multi-Regional Training Inc. (NEMRT), a police training organization in northern Illinois. Area police departments use the same machine to train their officers in making right decisions.

The machine has more than 100 different scenarios that place police in tough spots. Examples include a gunman in a middle school, car stops, domestic disturbance calls and more. They must decide when it is appropriate to shoot and when they should stick to using verbal commands.

The department has the simulator on loan for three weeks, and earlier this week, my judgmental capacity was put to the test.

My first scenario involved a domestic disturbance call. I arrived at the scene to discover that a husband and wife were arguing. Emotions were running high and neither person was listening to my commands to tell them to stop arguing. Suddenly the man got off the couch and pulled a knife out of his pocket. He lunged at his wife, but she fled to a bedroom. He then told me he was going to “stab my heart out” and lunged toward me. I fired the simulator gun and shot him.

I thought it was over, but then the wife came out of her bedroom with a gun and shot at me. I never saw that coming and I had a lot of questions racing through my head.

When should I have shot at the man? How was I supposed to know the woman would come after me? I just saved her from the knife man, didn’t I?

The police said I was correct in shooting the man when he lunged toward me. At that point, he has long arms and my life is very much in danger. They explained that in a domestic violence case, it is not unusual for a spouse to come after the police if they have used force on the other person, so I should have kept my guard up until she came out of the bedroom.

It was so different being on the other side of thing … never knowing whether someone was hiding a gun in the car or when the drunk guy was going to pull a gun out of his coat. Those are situations the police deal with on a regular basis.

After two more simulations — one of which would have definitely gotten me fired and probably would have resulted in a lawsuit — I can tell you the situations are very real. When faced with encounters like these, the police have to be aware of so many things and make tough decisions that I would rather not be in the position to make.