Video Simulator Takes Aim at Crime

So you think you’re Dirty Harry and you want to take on a few bad guys?

Then tighten your grip on the Smith & Wesson revolver and stare at the large video screen in front of you. Within moments, you will be in the middle of a chillingly realistic video simulation as a drug dealer blows away an undercover narcotics agent.

Did you shoot? How was your aim? Did the criminal plug you first?

Thanks to a sophisticated computer system that combines the thrill of Bonnie and Clyde with the technology of “Star Wars,” there’s no need for second-guessing. With split-second precision, the answers appear on the screen to show whether you should have used your gun, where your imaginary bullets landed and how quickly you responded--down to the thousandth of a second.

No video game, the system--dubbed FATS for its maker, Firearms Training Systems Inc. of Georgia--has become the rage of law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

Put on the market less than three years ago, the company has sold 120 FATS simulators at $35,000 each, strictly to law enforcement professionals. California customers include the U.S. Border Patrol in San Ysidro and the IRS in San Francisco, along with police departments and academies in San Diego, San Diego County and Pasadena, according to a FATS spokesman. Los Angeles police are buying two FATS systems, which will be delivered in about a month.

Now state law agencies also want the system, and the California Highway Patrol installed its new FATS simulator this week. The Department of Justice recently purchased a used FATS that it had been renting for its Sacramento academy, and it hopes to buy a new simulator next year to sharpen the skills of its agents in Southern California.

‘Threat Scenarios’

“It allows us in a space of a half an hour to expose an officer to danger-type threat scenarios that he may realistically encounter in his career once or twice,” said G. J. Doane, chief of the attorney general’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement this week during a demonstration of the FATS system.

In the past, Doane said, law enforcement agencies tried to approximate life-threatening situations by putting their academy classes through lectures, demonstrations, firing-range dummies and training films.

But those methods were imprecise at best, he said. FATS is much more realistic because it uses space-age technology to test an officer on both his judgment and marksmanship in reacting to simulated emergencies, Doane said.

Using a laser video disc, FATS creates the illusion of a crime video arcade. Any one of 40 different scenarios, taken from actual police incidents, are flashed up on a screen and an officer can respond by shooting a laser-equipped gun at the suspects a few feet away.

If the officer uses his gun at the right time--say, when the drug dealer blows away his partner--the computer flashes “GOOD JUDGMENT” on the top of the screen. That means he was, indeed, supposed to use his gun.

The computer also marks the bullet holes on the suspect, tallies the number of hits and misses, and records the officer’s response time. Scenarios can be played back in slow motion for additional study.

But if the officer fails to respond quickly enough, or if he uses his gun to mow down a defenseless suspect, the computer instantly chides, “BAD JUDGMENT.”

The FATS demonstrated this week featured knife-wielding court witnesses, gun-slinging motorists and one bad guy popping out of a car trunk with his shotgun blazing.

“Most students that go through this training, their palms are sweating and they’re all pumped up afterward,” said Walter Allen, shooting instructor for the state Department of Justice. So far, Allen has trained two recruit classes on FATS.

Yet most scenarios, Allen emphasized, do not require the use of deadly force and are intended to teach the recruits restraint.

“We don’t want to give the impression that we’re training people to go out with their hands on their guns all the time,” he said.