Reality-based training for El Paso County Sheriff’s Office Academy held Tuesday
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The El Paso County Sheriff's Office describes itself as "ahead of the curve" when it comes to supplementing classroom training with reality-based training, and more of the latter happened Tuesday.
The current academy of 35 deputies participated in the training at the office's training academy on Las Vegas Street.
The training comes a few days after Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced a major revamping of training at local law enforcement academies, the first such change in 40 years.
In reality-based training, cadets take part in role-playing scenarios that have no predetermined outcome, interacting with experienced officers or actors to make the training more realistic.
"If you were watching this in a classroom setting on a tape or video, while you can take something from those videos, it's not true learning," said training deputy Keenan Dukes. "You're not going to see that additional stress. So you may say: You know what? I can handle that. So, reality-based training is actually making them do that."
Weiser said that his office wants to create a standard for academies to follow, while allowing individual agencies to develop personalized training to fit their communities and resources; the attorney general is seeking feedback from local departments in that regard.
Weiser also said that he wants deputy recruits to have more emotional awareness to avoid escalating situations with people during calls for service, and calls for a greater focus on deputies' and officers' mental health.
"There's a fine line between when to use force -- and deadly force -- and when not to," Dukes said. "We want the recruits to learn that. The goal is for everyone, whether it's us or the suspects, to come home alive."
Joshua Perez, 27, recently completed Army service and is among the deputy recruits.
"The hardest part for me, personally -- coming from a military background -- was actually taking a second to step back and say: Hey, this is something I actually need to talk through, not just something that I need to rush into," he explained. "You get tunnel vision, your heart rate goes up. You just focus on that one thing, but you're trying to keep a better overview of everything else."
The recruits started their academy training in June and are expected to finish in September; they hope to join the current force of around 530 deputies.
KRDO reporter Scott Harrison was allowed to participate in some of the training, and had mixed results -- successfully convincing an angry suspect to drop his weapon in one scenario, and in another, taking down a school shooting suspect only to be shot on the simulator by another armed suspect.
"Quick decisions like that are what law enforcement officers are faced with every day," Dukes said.
