New shooting simulator ups realism for L.A. County sheriff’s deputies

In eight years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Chad Wagner has never fired his gun at a suspect.

On Friday, he faced several situations where he had to.

The bullets were puffs of carbon dioxide and the shooters were actors on a screen, but Wagner made the same split-second decisions he would on the streets around the East Los Angeles station, where he is a patrol deputy.

The new shooting simulator that Wagner and his partner, Thomas Aragon, used has screens on three sides -- an improvement over the Sheriff’s Department’s old simulator, which has a single screen in front.

In a workplace shooting scenario, the deputies encountered several bleeding victims and shot two gunmen dead, but not before they themselves were shot – an injury simulated with an electric shock from a box each deputy wore on his waist.

In another scenario, a man they were tailing pulled out a gun as he got out of his car. Aragon shot him, while Wagner tasered a hysterical woman who had appeared in the driveway with a baseball bat.

The department’s 9,000 patrol deputies will each sharpen their skills on the new simulator, which cost $201,000. It will eventually be used by academy trainees as well.

“If we do make the decision to shoot, we want to shoot the right people,” Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers said.

For more Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department news, follow @cindychangLA. She can be reached at cindy.chang@latimes.com.