A Place to Play Cops ‘n’ Robbers

‘(This) is providing us (with) reality . . . instead of . . . going, “Bang! Bang!” and saying “I shot that person dead.” ’

--Sheriff Brad Gates

Steve Sharpe was doomed from the very beginning. Before the patrol car came screaming toward the house where he was barricaded. Before a helicopter swooped down to deposit two officers from the Tactical Support Team on the roof. Before one of them shot him with a laser gun as he came running out the front door.

Sharpe, an investigator for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, was the bad guy in a hostage scenario staged Tuesday to publicize “Laser Village,” a new training facility that Sheriff Brad Gates and other law enforcement officials touted as the most advanced of its kind.

The spectacle, with its promising photo opportunities, drew a crowd of reporters that numbered almost as many as the 50 or so business leaders and dignitaries who turned out to applaud the latest addition to the department’s target range on Katella Avenue in Orange.

The village, a set worthy of a B-grade movie, included a Unocal service station, gasoline pumps and all; a Carl’s Jr. restaurant; a Crazy Horse Steak House--”Bud Light on Tap”--a post office, and three houses furnished right down to the made-up beds.

Built primarily by inmates on work furlough, the village cost an estimated $500,000. The money was contributed by a group of about 50 corporations--many credited in the form of stores and restaurants on the training set--after the Sheriff’s Department found it could not come up with the funds from its budget.

Laser Village is a realistic setting in which trainees, equipped with special laser guns and jackets that light up to indicate a direct hit, can play cops and robbers. That means bank robberies and drug busts, shoot-outs and--everyone’s favorite--the hostage situation.

“In a nutshell, what this is doing is providing us (with) reality . . . instead of marching into a building and going, ‘Bang! Bang!’ and saying ‘I shot that person dead,’ ” Gates said at a press conference before the shoot-out. “We’re certainly going to use the heck out of it in the future.”

Laser Village is expected to open sometime in October, according to Sgt. Terry Boyd, who will direct an eight-hour basic training course for Tactical Support Team units, the sheriff’s equivalent of SWAT teams, along with other more specialized courses for canine, drug and hostage negotiation units. Eventually, Boyd said, he hopes to train everyone in the department, along with officers from local police departments.

As for Tuesday’s display, well, he admitted, it was a little overdone.

“It’s a lot of Hollywood, to be honest,” Boyd said. “It’s to show what we have.”