When To Pull The Trigger: A Look Inside Police Deadly Force Simulation Training

KVRR's Jackie Kelly Goes Through The Deadly Force Simulation Training With The Moorhead Police Department

MOORHEAD, Minn. — Have you ever wondered what training police officers go through to learn whether or not to use deadly force?

A police officer’s job is to serve and protect our community.

With that, they face different scenarios where they are forced to make quick decisions on whether or not to use deadly force.

To help prepare their officers for these situations, the Moorhead Police Department uses a training system which simulates hundreds of different situations.

“A lot of these scenarios are based on real-life events that happened and then this company creates a scenario to that so our officers can experience what those officers had to experience,” said Sgt. Robb Matheson.

During these simulations, the officer controlling the computer has the ability to decide what will happen next based on how the officer going through the training is responding.

“If they do something right, you can change it where somebody might comply,” Matheson said. “If they’re not doing something, you can make the person more agitated, where they have to engage more.”

Moorhead Police let KVRR’s Jackie Kelly step in front of the screen to try it out.

The first scenario was an armed robbery at a convenience store and Jackie says she wasn’t sure when to use deadly force.

Her hesitation came with repercussions.

“So in this situation, I just hit the pretzels and she died?” Jackie asked Matheson, who was controlling the computer.

“In real life, once he gets done shooting her, he’s probably going to shoot you,” Matheson said. “So you have to keep engaging.”

My second scenario involved a suspicious man in a dumpster.

“Get out of the dumpster,” Jackie yelled out.

Sgt. Scott Kostohryz said she did the right thing. “It’s that simple, and a lot of these scenarios are that simple. We purposely give them scenarios where no force will be used because we want to reinforce that verbal de–escalation.”

KVRR’s Chief Photographer, Patrick Conteh, joined Jackie.

They confronted a suspicious man in a warehouse who would not cooperate with verbal commands.

While they asked for his ID, he quickly pulled out a staple gun and caused Jackie and Patrick to flinch.

“I think if you guys would have both had your guns up the way you reacted, you probably would have shot,” Kostohryz said.

One of the challenges of going into a situation with a partner, Matheson said, is you have to remain independent in your decision making.

“We’re trying to expose officers to this so that they get that training and they experience the stress that goes with it and everything that goes on with stress and loss of vision, loss of hearing, and that kind of thing. The more we can expose our officers to that, the less chance there is to some unfortunate situation happening,” Matheson said.