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Police Officers Are Learning to Spot Sex Trafficking in Virtual Reality
VR could be especially well-suited for teaching officers how to spot problems that aren’t often immediately recognizable
A little after 5 a.m. on November 5, 2019, a police officer in Lodi, California received a dispatch: gunshots had been heard in the industrial park. He pulled up to find a 37-year-old male armed with a semi-automatic rifle and handgun. When the man started shooting, the officer returned fire, flooring the suspect, who was transported to the hospital with nonthreatening wounds. The officer was unharmed.
What could have gone differently in this scenario? Was there a way to disarm the suspect without fire?
These are the types of questions Lieutenant Steve Nelson of the Lodi Police Department wants his trainees to think about when they enter his recreations of on-the-job predicaments in the station’s virtual reality training simulator. “We focus on de-escalation,” he says. “Being an effective communicator plays a huge part, but some trainees find it difficult to engage people in conversation.” In VR, they can practice their verbal skills, with less pressure.
The software Nelson uses, called Apex Officer, lets officers remake the past with an eye toward…
