Straight Shooter

To me, it was all a game.

At least at first.

Facing a movie screen, I watched as the image of a guy in camouflage walked out of the bushes toward me. An AK-47-like weapon was clearly visible at his side. I assumed it was the same gun that was used to kill my partner, who lay slumped in the driver’s seat of his patrol car.

“Drop the gun!” I yelled. Well, actually, it sounded more like, “Um, drop the gun?”

No response. Maybe I should have said “please.” No, they never say that on “NYPD Blue.”

Ahem. “Drop the gun!” Nothing. “Drop the gun!”

He points the gun at me. I knew from my three years or so of police reporting that it was OK to shoot him now. Heck, it was urgent to shoot him.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Oops. I’m dead.

A sharp sting on my right shin notified me that the computerized image I was facing in combat had gotten off a very real shot before I did, blasting me with a nylon ball instead of the bullet I would have received in real life.

And real life, with real shootings, is the ultimate end of this exercise in the PRISim, which stands for Professional Range Instruction Simulator. Demonstrated at the TREXPO law enforcement trade show at the Burbank Hilton Convention Center last week and used at the Los Angeles Police Academy, it’s a type of virtual reality training in which officers are put through scenarios projected on a movie screen.

As in real life, they have mere seconds to decide whether to shoot or hold their fire; suspects hold up their hands in surrender or suddenly whip out a gun; bystanders and innocent victims collapse with bloody wounds if they are accidentally hit.

Unlike training exercises in the past, this one shoots back. If the officer--armed with a real handgun containing rubber bullets--is too slow or inaccurate, the computer gunman fires a .68-caliber nylon ball driven by a compressed air charge.

It really stings too.

The experience made me think.

I was “dead” because the other guy shot first. I knew the rules said I couldn’t shoot him while his gun was at his side. But by the time he pointed it at me, I was a goner. How could I have obeyed the rules and still survived?

As a reporter, it’s my job to ask the questions when there’s been an officer-involved shooting. Was the shooting justified? Why did the officer shoot? Could pepper spray or beanbag rounds have been used?

And if an officer gets shot, it becomes: Why did it happen? Did the officer take cover? Could reaction time have been faster?

Now I realize how hard it is to answer those questions.

The average shooting from start to finish, takes 2 1/2 seconds, said Greg Hoover, the retired LAPD SWAT officer who trains officers on the simulator for Tukwila, Wash.-based Advanced Interactive Systems. This means an officer has microseconds to examine a violent situation and decide whether it can be stopped without using lethal force. If not, the officer must fire quickly and accurately.

I had some definite problems with the accuracy part.

An instant replay of my reporter-involved-shooting showed the first bullet went through the trees. The second hit the door of my partner’s patrol car, which I was using for cover. I was told by my wisecracking instructor that I’d owe the city some money for that one.

The third bullet hit the driver’s side mirror. Great, seven years of bad luck. Not to mention my camouflaged opponent made a successful escape into the bushes. If this were real, I knew there would be hell to pay when my sergeant got hold of me.

My second time with the same scenario was a little better. This time, I missed the guy by a mere 2 feet. But again, I was dead, so I suppose even though I was more accurate, that would do little for my grieving mother.

I was no match for Los Angeles Police Department Officers Sean Mulford and Victor Ross, who came to the trade show on their off time. Mulford stopped an angry husband with a gun from shooting his cheating wife and others in a crowded restaurant.

Ross walked in on a rape. As the man put a serrated knife to the neck of the victim, Ross simply shot him, right between the eyes. The officer shrugged, saying he shot because he knew he could hit him.

Unlike me, neither officer got pegged with the nylon ball.

Ross went through the same scenario again, but this time Hoover told him not to shoot the rapist, but to wait for an opportunity for him to release the victim. Ross watched as the man plunged a knife into the woman’s back. As the woman’s body fell to the floor, the rapist’s hands flashed above his head in surrender.

In a split second, the situation had changed. But Ross was already squeezing the trigger before the rapist’s hands began to rise, and it was too late to stop the gun from firing. In real life, the rapist would have been shot with his hands in the air, and I would have been asking questions about that.

I’ll still ask the same questions whenever there is an officer-involved shooting, because they need to be asked. There will still be, each time, a need to know whether the officer was justified in using force or should have used restraint.

But I can’t help wondering what I’d do if it were me who walked in on a real-life robbery where a bank teller was being held hostage, pleading for her life.

Would I panic? Would I shoot an innocent bystander? Would the robber kill her if I didn’t shoot him?

Seeing what a lousy shot I am, the citizens of Los Angeles should sleep better at night knowing those are decisions I won’t have to make.

But now I know just how tough it is for those who must make them.