Could Role-Playing Conflict Situations Help Reduce Cop Shootings?

At a time when police use of force is increasingly under scrutiny, experts say training simulations — like role-playing potential conflict situations they might encounter while on patrol — are a key way to reduce the number of times police fire their weapons, according to The Washington Post. These role-playing scenario training tactics are a growing part of options that new evidence supports is valuable as long as it feels realistic. To facilitate this, some departments are using live actors, others projected videotaped scenarios on screens that wrap around the room. The key to this learning tactic is to train the officer on methods of de-escalation over and over until it becomes second nature.

“Giving police officers the ability to practice these scenarios, particularly when they’re very young in their careers, is really important,” said Rashawn Ray, a sociology professor who heads up the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland at College Park. This training method has been used in Camden, N.J., and officers haven’t fired a lethal weapon in the line of duty since 2017, and officer complaints of excessive use of force have dropped from 44 in 2015 to just 5 last year. “I can tell you, it absolutely works — 100 percent,” the department spokesman said.