The software’s surprisingly lifelike simulations offer a cutting-edge tool in facing life-or-death situations.

John TerhunePress Herald

During a demonstration of the Portland Police Department’s new virtual reality program, Apex Officer, Portland patrol Officer Dan Knight interacts with a video character experiencing a mental health crisis. The program, which is visible on the projection screen in the background, puts police in various situations to train them for real-world encounters. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Watching the recording back, the man looks like a mediocre cartoon. But when he was standing in front of me, expression blank, gun in hand, he felt real enough.

“Police!” I shouted as I raised my own fake handgun into a shooting position. “Put the gun down!”

For a moment, he stood frozen in the virtual sunshine. Then the first bullet hit me.

Police say it’s impossible to truly simulate what it feels like to be in the kind of life-or-death situation that can prompt law enforcement officers to use deadly force against the civilians they are sworn to protect. But Portland police leaders hope the department’s new virtual reality training program will teach officers to defuse dangerous situations before they get violent – and to react with force quickly when those tactics fail.

“Things happen like this,” training Sgt. Dan Hayden said with a snap of his fingers during a recent demonstration of the department’s Apex Officer program. “We want people to be able to go to a high-stress environment and still make good decisions. But to do that, you have to stress (them) over and over and over again.”

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