Once Huot Career and Technical Center student Cayden Krupnik secures the virtual reality headset over his eyes and gets oriented, a menu screen is projected on the board at the front of the classroom. The headset tracks the gaze of Krupnik as he stares at one of the menu items to select it.
Krupnik’s classmates — all seniors like him in their second year of the law enforcement course at the Huot Center in Laconia — focus on the board, intently taking notes. They see what he sees, but Krupnik is in control of the simulation.
The screen alights on a scene of a man beating an SUV with a crowbar. Krupnik is a solo officer responding to the call. Every few seconds, the simulation pauses, and he has a choice between a handful of actions: continue talking, draw your taser or your firearm. After a few attempts at interrupting the man, he turns toward the officer and gets closer, refusing to cooperate.
As the man gets threateningly close, Krupnik chooses to draw and then fire his taser. It hits the man, but does not incapacitate him. He fires it again, this time with success. The simulation shows the officer placing the man in handcuffs.
These students are the first high-schoolers in the country, to the district’s knowledge, to implement VR law enforcement simulation technology in the classroom. Funded by a Perkins Grant, the Huot gained access to this tool in December, almost immediately after it was first used by the Gilford and Laconia police departments. The system is created by Axon, more commonly known for making tasers.
The technology poses distinct benefits to young students compared to law enforcement professionals, and is just one of the immersive experiences elevating the center’s law enforcement curriculum, according to instructor Bill Clary, a retired captain of the Laconia Police Department.
The first year of the course focuses on bedrock knowledge, starting with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and includes key subjects such as the criminal code, motor vehicle laws, the appeal process, the state use of force law, the history of American police work and law enforcement ethics. The second year becomes much more hands-on. Students learn how to operate handcuffs, perform a traffic stop, file police reports, juggle multiple calls and, through the simulations, navigate real-life scenarios and experience the consequences of key decisions.
‘Two and two together’
While law enforcement professionals are equipped with their own experience, degrees, training and the known policies of their department as they use VR, these students mainly rely on their gut.
“Part of it is just learning to make decisions,” Clary said.
As Krupnik removes the headset, Clary asks students questions about what they included in their notes. Hannah Donovan is tapped to perform the simulation again, choosing different actions this time.
At the scene, Donovan also begins by trying to engage with the man. More quickly, she instead draws her firearm, but continues trying to get the man to put down his weapon and talk. She learns that the car he is destroying belongs to his wife, who recently told him she was leaving. After some time, he does as Donovan asks, and she is able to make an arrest without using force.
Clary advises the importance of the officer having no backup: Most law enforcement agencies, Clary emphasizes, have policies that require officers to have backup with a firearm drawn in order for them to use a taser. Krupnik’s action, in a real setting, would have likely violated his agency’s policies.
Other modules students can choose from include officer in crisis, domestic violence, shoplifter and more. New scenarios are periodically added to the software.
The simulations take the hands-on and book learning students get and render it real. “They put two and two together,” Clary said.
Despite the pressure of being in command, Donovan continued, “I like that it lets you choose all the wrong options.” Students learn by — in a dissectible, replayable process — everything that can happen when an officer makes the wrong call.
Clary said he is still folding VR into his curriculum at the Huot, where he has been an instructor since January 2016. In many ways, from righting technical difficulties to working through new scenarios, he is learning its benefits alongside his pupils.
The benefits of the simulations’ immersion, McCarthy said, go beyond making high-stakes decisions and help students to visualize the complete spectrum of what it really means to work in the field.
“They really draw me in,” McCarthy said. “I feel like I’m actually there, an actual officer making decisions.”
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