Editorial: Police simulations should unite police and community

In an effort to rekindle the relationship between officers and their communities, Pittsburgh police gave several people from the community an opportunity to experience what it’s like to “serve and protect” last week.

At the Pittsburgh Police and Fire Training Academy on Washington Boulevard, several invitees on behalf of the Pittsburgh Police Zone 5’s Commander’s Cabinet worked through scenarios ranging from routine traffic stops to active shooter situations. The Zone 5’s Commander’s Cabinet —  a group of Pittsburghers brought together to deal with critical issues facing police and their communities —  armed the participants with equipment like firearms, tasers, pepper spray and batons and asked them to react in real time. 

While it’s difficult for people who aren’t police officers to fathom the job’s danger, the simulations don’t consider alternative methods of handling difficult situations when you are a trained police officer. We shouldn’t just be exposing the community how to react to events police encounter with weapons as if that is the only viable mitigator.

With the police brutality cases that have strewn 2014 and 2015, police should use activities like the Pittsburgh police simulations to foster trust. They shouldn’t internalize a willingness to pull the trigger, but rather demonstrate to the community their rights and the process before the decision to pull out a gun. Police could, instead, show invitees how they use their training to disarm citizens.

It’s no secret police often draw their weapons and shoot when they feel they are being threatened. Sometimes, it is justified, but other times, police officers shoot and kill people who were not a threat or were unarmed. 

Close to home, a constable sent to deliver an eviction notice Monday to a Pennsylvania resident shot and killed the 12-year-old daughter of 57-year-old Donald Meyer, who had raised his rifle to the constable. The constable shot through Meyer and killed his daughter. 

 Weapons remain the default in many scenarios when police interact with citizens. Training the community to use them in a simulation is only perpetuating the malignant relationship between many U.S. communities and their local police. 

Police should also use simulation activities and debriefing opportunities after simulations to instruct community members on their rights. While the virtual experience of the day-to-day life of the police helps ordinary people understand how difficult it is to discern between a dangerous perpetrator and an innocent civilian, police shouldn’t use these opportunities to create cohesion by putting everyday people in high-stress situations. Posed with a virtual knife-wielding woman, one of the simulation participants explained her experience when the simulation ended, saying “They’re faced with split-second decisions, and I don’t know if we give them enough credit.”

The Commander’s Cabinet said their goal was to “build a cohesive team that can respond with one united voice in the event that we experience a Ferguson or Baltimore style incident here in Pittsburgh.”  

But we shouldn’t be training for an event like  Ferguson or Baltimore. We should prevent mass protests against police brutality from ever happening by creating a direct channel of communication and unity between police and the community.

By weaning themselves off of a weapon-heavy protocol and educating locals about their rights, police can better connect themselves with their communities and utilize activities like simulations to a higher degree, leaving an impact as well as a sense of solidarity.