• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • The Magazine
  • Events
  • Partners
  • Products
  • Contact
  • Jobs and Careers
  • Advertise
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Subscribe
American Police Beat

American Police Beat Magazine

Law Enforcement Publication

  • Home
  • Leadership
    • Setting ethical expectations early in an officer’s career
      Go that extra mile with a smile
      Improving the promotional process for supervisors
      Developing an ethics-centered police department
      Leadership without the family factor is not leadership
  • Topics
    • Leadership
      • Setting ethical expectations early in an officer’s career
        Go that extra mile with a smile
        Improving the promotional process for supervisors
        Developing an ethics-centered police department
        Leadership without the family factor is not leadership
    • Editor’s Picks
      • Off duty, but never off guard
        The tyranny of memories
        Meeting training needs on a limited budget
        Empowering through experience
        Getting ahead of the story
    • On the Job
      • No case too cold
        Summer is coming
        Securing the Texas border one K-9 team at a time
        Empowering through experience
        Philadelphia Amtrack officer’s quick actions saves conductor’s...
    • Labor
      • Critical incidents and waiting woosah
        Insufficient police staffing continues throughout the U.S.
        The righteous battle
        Recruitment and retention
        Austin police chief aims to end officer shortage as recruitment...
    • Tech
      • Your website is your front desk
        Telegram investigations
        Florida sheriff’s office deploys cutting-edge forensic tool to...
        A new chapter for Utah law enforcement
        Is AI the future of report writing?
    • Training
      • Off duty, but never off guard
        Meeting training needs on a limited budget
        Be a thermostat, not a thermometer
        Duty knives: Practical or just “tacticool”
        Dry-fire practice doesn’t need to be boring
    • Policy
      • Michigan Supreme Court: Marijuana odor alone no longer justifies...
        Milwaukee P.D. and schools clash over SROs
        Seattle Police Department launches new plan to curb violent crime
        Buffer-zone law blocked in Louisiana
        Dakota’s Law: Pensions for police dogs?
    • Health/Wellness
      • Keeping work at work and home at home
        Avoiding the road to burnout
        Texas sheriff’s office hit with series of suicides
        The tyranny of memories
        “Why are you mad at me?”
    • Community
      • San Diego Honors Fallen Officer Austin Machitar with Park Renaming
        Battle of the Badges baseball game to support injured Missouri officer
        Temple University Police celebrate 7-year-old’s support with...
        A local problem with a statewide solution
        From traffic stops to tip-offs: Iowa officer becomes basketball...
    • Offbeat
      • Not eggzactly a perfect heist
        Pizza … with a side of alligator?
        Wisconsin man charged with impersonating Border Patrol agent twice in...
        Only in California?
        Durango, Colorado, police hop into action after unusual 9-1-1 call
    • We Remember
      • Honoring Fallen Heroes
        What’s with the white chairs?
        The pain and sorrow of loss
        A cop and his car
        A dream of remembrance
    • HOT Mail
      • The War on Cops Continues Unabated
  • On the Job
    • No case too cold
      Summer is coming
      Securing the Texas border one K-9 team at a time
      Empowering through experience
      Philadelphia Amtrack officer’s quick actions saves conductor’s...
  • Labor
    • Critical incidents and waiting woosah
      Insufficient police staffing continues throughout the U.S.
      The righteous battle
      Recruitment and retention
      Austin police chief aims to end officer shortage as recruitment...
  • Tech
    • Your website is your front desk
      Telegram investigations
      Florida sheriff’s office deploys cutting-edge forensic tool to...
      A new chapter for Utah law enforcement
      Is AI the future of report writing?
  • Training
    • Off duty, but never off guard
      Meeting training needs on a limited budget
      Be a thermostat, not a thermometer
      Duty knives: Practical or just “tacticool”
      Dry-fire practice doesn’t need to be boring
  • Policy
    • Michigan Supreme Court: Marijuana odor alone no longer justifies...
      Milwaukee P.D. and schools clash over SROs
      Seattle Police Department launches new plan to curb violent crime
      Buffer-zone law blocked in Louisiana
      Dakota’s Law: Pensions for police dogs?
  • Health/Wellness
    • Keeping work at work and home at home
      Avoiding the road to burnout
      Texas sheriff’s office hit with series of suicides
      The tyranny of memories
      “Why are you mad at me?”
  • Community
    • San Diego Honors Fallen Officer Austin Machitar with Park Renaming
      Battle of the Badges baseball game to support injured Missouri officer
      Temple University Police celebrate 7-year-old’s support with...
      A local problem with a statewide solution
      From traffic stops to tip-offs: Iowa officer becomes basketball...
  • Offbeat
    • Not eggzactly a perfect heist
      Pizza … with a side of alligator?
      Wisconsin man charged with impersonating Border Patrol agent twice in...
      Only in California?
      Durango, Colorado, police hop into action after unusual 9-1-1 call
  • We Remember
    • Honoring Fallen Heroes
      What’s with the white chairs?
      The pain and sorrow of loss
      A cop and his car
      A dream of remembrance
  • HOT Mail
    • The War on Cops Continues Unabated
  • About
  • The Magazine
  • Events
  • Partners
  • Products
  • Contact
  • Jobs and Careers
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
Search

Training

Beyond shoot/no shoot

The evolution of police simulator training

Todd Fletcher and Dr. Joy VerPlanck Published October 10, 2021 @ 12:00 pm PDT

iStock.com/iStock.com/Renphoto

Most police officers are familiar with classic simulation scenarios such as a man standing at a door who quickly raises his hands to reveal either a knife, flip phone, wallet, gun or empty palms. In typical training settings, participants are considered successful if they shoot when justified or abstain when not. If it gets too easy, some instructors may add laps around the building or pushups to elevate the student’s heart rate.

This training method is inadequate, and actually it has never been sufficient. Here are three simulator training practices to stop doing immediately and some suggestions on what to do instead.

Problem #1: Failing to have a learning objective

De-escalation, active shooter, homeless encampment and mental health are all general practice areas to train for in simulation, but no matter how realistic or challenging the scenario, none of them provide a learnable action item by themselves. If your agency is required to complete periodic de-escalation training, choosing a random scenario from your favorites folder and selecting the branch to comply when the student says, “Calm down, buddy, drop the knife” is generally useless to the learner. It’s also largely ineffective as a de-escalation tactic, but that’s a topic for another day.

When you give everyone the same scenario, you’re treating everyone as if they had the same skill level and ability. Randomly selecting scenarios also fails to take into account each trainee’s individual cognitive capacity for that moment in time or a metric for assessing their improvement as their learning path continues. Training not designed for the learner, or failing to provide measurable results, is training time wasted.

Do this instead: Have a plan before the student enters the training room. Incorporating a classification system to distinguish student capabilities and expectations — such as Bloom’s Taxonomy — is especially helpful in developing structured outlines for novice participants for each topic and a framework or grading rubric for assessing student skill level. Learning objectives for participants should include an action verb that’s observable, with words like recognize, demonstrate, differentiate and implement. For advanced or more experienced trainees, consider incorporating design elements of cognitive load theory to push a student’s capacity for developing long-term knowledge into automated response.

Learning objectives should not be the same for a novice and an expert, so it’s important to make sure your criteria for success is appropriate for the learner in front of you. If the scenario includes responding to an incident at a homeless encampment, a novice may be expected to recall the local resources for food and medical care when asked for help, whereas an experienced officer may be expected to simultaneously know those and recognize signs of neglect or abuse. Additionally, an expert officer may be able to accomplish all this while managing a crowd or communicating a plan to others for removing bystanders who are compounding an already difficult situation. Plan ahead and choose scenarios that meet targeted learning objectives.

Problem #2: Focusing on rapid shoot/no-shoot scenarios

Testing an officer’s ability to react quickly, decisively and appropriately with force is an important part of law enforcement training, but there is much more we can do to prepare officers for the types of calls they will regularly encounter. One valid concern with habitually choosing shoot/no-shoot scenarios is instructors are priming the trainee to anticipate that calls will end rapidly — one way or another. Trainees can quickly develop the habit of anticipating the high likelihood of either a force option requirement or a “gotcha” moment every time they enter the simulator room. As with any behavior, the more this is practiced in training, the more habits are being formed that could translate into the field. As a result, if they encounter a similar scenario in the field, regardless of whether the same force option is justified or not, they are cognitively preloaded with a practiced response from training.

Do this instead: One benefit of the evolution of modern simulators is the ability to choose from a large number of scenarios (over 1,000 in some) and many contain nearly limitless branching options and looping functions. The advantage of continuous looping in scenarios is to keep officers engaged for the actual time it takes to work through realistic encounters. Consider the amount of time it can take to isolate and interview someone in the middle of a crowded chaotic setting or manage someone in the middle of a mental health or drug-induced crisis.

If the training time is available, create habits that help officers train for the endurance required for a lengthy situation. Consider adding audio clips in the middle of a scenario. Hearing things that are unexpected can increase situational awareness and memory recall. In addition to shoot/no-shoot scenarios, a well-designed training program should incorporate less-lethal options, officer down drills, buddy and self-rescue, team communication and movement, de-escalation scenarios, triage, realistic radio traffic to dispatch and responding officers … the list goes on and on. Be creative when you’re developing learning objectives and selecting scenarios, and encourage the creativity of your students when they’re participating.

Problem #3: Letting the scenario run and finishing with a review of shot placement

Starting a scenario, observing, doing a quick debriefing to say “nice headshot, good job” and moving quickly on to the next scenario is not only an inadequate representation of the job, but it fails to provide opportunities for insight generation or creative thinking that leads to officer cognitive development. Instructors who run simulator training by pressing play and providing low quality debriefing sessions without ample time and prompts for thoughtful discussion aren’t instructors. Observing for testing or grading purposes requires a proctor or evaluator, not an instructor. There is a time and place for skills verification, but it’s important to separate testing from training.

Do this instead: Insights are those “a-ha” moments that generate innovative ideas about how to do things creatively.1 Creative thinking is one of the most critical skills required for policing, and training to develop it can help novice officers become independent and empowered thinkers capable of advanced problem solving without waiting to be told what to do. Pausing scenarios in the middle to prompt a shift in response, then debriefing officers with questions instead of telling them what they did right or wrong is an opportunity to cultivate new thought processes. Consider framing questions around how to approach situations within applicable case law, state legal standards and departmental policies while providing a setting conducive to generating insights.

This is also the time for officers to work on recalling specific features of the scenario, such as describing the scene, details of the force response and post-incident responses. If relevant to the scenario, pre-assault indicators, officer vs. threat factors and other influential circumstances should all be covered during these debriefings. If you don’t have time for debrief, you don’t have time for training.

This is another opportunity to increase your expectations of expert officers. With newer officers, instructors should consider pausing the scenario to ask the student about the scene or details of the force response. This is the time to ask questions and discuss how state law and department policy affects response options. On the other hand, expert officers may be expected to recall the same or more detail without prompting from the instructor. This is another reminder of the importance of knowing the individual student’s place on the novice–expert scale.

Simulators alone do not provide training

Technology is a tool for the professional instructor. Incorporating instruction before, during and after scenarios is the secret sauce of simulator training that creates training value. You may think you can’t afford to take an officer out of service for a lengthy training session, but the truth is, you can’t afford to do any less. As the instructor, putting in the effort and preparing for your students doesn’t just get better performance results, it shows respect and demonstrates to your officers that they’re worthy of your time.

Todd Fletcher and Dr. Joy VerPlanck

Todd Fletcher and Dr. Joy VerPlanck

Dr. Joy VerPlanck is a former Army military police officer and simulations training expert with over 25 years of experience in training, organizational development and instructional design. She is a senior insight strategist at the NeuroLeadership Institute and serves as chair of the advisory board for MILO, combining the science of human interaction with the immersive power of educational technology to continuously improve law enforcement training.

Todd Fletcher is a retired sergeant from central Oregon with over 25 years of law enforcement experience. He presents firearms training and instructor development classes nationwide. Todd has presented at multiple regional, national and international conferences, including multiple ILEETA conferences and IALEFI events. He owns Combative Firearms Training, LLC, providing training and instructor development classes to law enforcement, military and private security. He can be contacted at Todd@CombativeFirearms.com.

View articles by Todd Fletcher and Dr. Joy VerPlanck

As seen in the October 2021 issue of American Police Beat magazine.
Don’t miss out on another issue today! Click below:

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Categories: Training

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles

  • Keeping work at work and home at home
  • Critical incidents and waiting woosah
  • Setting ethical expectations early in an officer’s career
  • Your website is your front desk
  • San Diego Honors Fallen Officer Austin Machitar with Park Renaming
  • Avoiding the road to burnout
  • National Police Week 2025
  • A look into National Police Week
  • Honoring Fallen Heroes
  • What’s with the white chairs?

Footer

Our Mission
To serve as a trusted voice of the nation’s law enforcement community, providing informative, entertaining and inspiring content on interesting and engaging topics affecting peace officers today.

Contact us: info@apbweb.com | (800) 234-0056.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Categories

  • Editor’s Picks
  • On the Job
  • Labor
  • Tech
  • Training
  • Policy
  • Health/Wellness
  • Community
  • Offbeat
  • We Remember
  • Jobs and Careers
  • Events

Editor’s Picks

Off duty, but never off guard

Off duty, but never off guard

May 05, 2025

The tyranny of memories

The tyranny of memories

May 04, 2025

Meeting training needs on a limited budget

Meeting training needs on a limited budget

May 02, 2025

Empowering through experience

Empowering through experience

April 18, 2025

Policies | Consent Preferences | Copyright © 2025 APB Media, LLC | Website design, development and maintenance by 911MEDIA

Open

Subscribe

Close

Receive the latest news and updates from American Police Beat directly to your inbox!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.