It's Andy Fish!

Above – Caro City Police officers used the Tuscola County Technology Center’s Milo Advanced Range Firearms Police Training Simulator to do some training. (Courtesy Photo)

My youngest son Adam and I have been in the Police Civilian Academy since early September, the eleven week program gives you an insider look at what difficulties police have to face and the training they receive. On this particular night we went into a simulator where different scenarios played out and you had to interact/respond to what was happening on the screen.

We were the last pair to go. Before us the other teams faced some difficult challenges– a guy with a knife who comes at you from 31, 21 and 15 feet so you can see how little time you have to respond. The solution? If you’re facing someone with a weapon your pistol should not be in your holster and should be ready to use.

Another simulator was a domestic violence scenario, the pair ordered the guy to put down his knife and he complied. The way the system seems to work is the officer controlling the scenario can change someone’s reaction based on how you’re doing.

The hardest one (besides ours of course) was one that featured a suicidal woman in a bathtub ready to end it all with a hair dryer. Not sure how you get out of this one, the solution apparently was to calm her down and try and get the plug out of the wall.

When it came time for our turn, both of us real life firearm owners, we were a bit cocky– telling them to give us one with a lot of shooting.

It was an active school shooter situation. As we entered the building kids ran past us, then we entered a cafeteria where there were victims on the ground and other kids who were hunkered down, some of them got up and ran past us as we came in. The shooter appeared to our right and we took him out as he pointed our weapon towards us.

The scenario continued, and when I ordered the remaining students to get up and get outside and they stayed in place I had a pretty good idea there was another shooter, soon he popped his head out and we took him out too.

Still, the kids stayed on the ground. Could there be a third shooter? Suddenly the girl about 15 feet from me suffered a gunshot wound to the head and slumped forward. My first thought was Adam had shot her since I knew I hadn’t, but then sure enough third shooter and this one was much further away– we returned fire but when the screen went red we knew we’d been hit.

After some analysis, we decided what we did wrong was not talk to each other, even though we both had similar thoughts. We also should have yelled to any additional shooters that the only way they were getting out was to throw down their weapons.

The most frustrating thing about the simulator was that it wouldn’t let you walk so you were at the mercy of the pacing of the cameraman. I would have moved a lot quicker to get some cover, and it felt unnatural to just stand there (at one moment I thought the game was over). But its a very valuable tool because there’s no question it felt real enough and it shows you how little time these Officers have to make critical life or death decisions.