How police use virtual reality for training and education

Emergency and security services such as the fire department, police and ambulance have been using virtual reality for a long time as a training tool. It helps them to practice virtually on situations they encounter in practice. In this article we zoom in on the benefits of virtual reality training and how it is used at the (inter)national level.

The benefits of training police with VR

Virtual reality offers numerous advantages for training such as higher engagement, more focus and the fact that you can train anywhere. The biggest advantage in training police in virtual reality is the ability to safely train unsafe scenarios. Think life-threatening scenarios such as a shooting or a terrorist attack.

How are police using virtual reality for training?

The police use vr, among other things, to prevent ethnic profiling and interview techniques, the so-called soft skills. The so-called hard skills such as shooting and the use of a taser are also popular in this type of program.

Examples of police vr training

Below are five examples of vr training by the police, both in the Netherlands and abroad.

New Jersey Police Academy

Virtual reality helps these police officers better prepare for situations they face in the real world. Think of traffic accidents or domestic reports but also things like shootings. The officer’s actions influence the further steps in the training program.

Fort Myers Police Department

This vr simulation places officers in a life-threatening experience such as a confrontation with a drug addict or someone with mental health issues. The goal is to de-escalate and safely detain suspects. The trainer can create his own scenarios and assign certain characteristics to suspects, allowing individual training programs to be created for officers.

Sacramento Police Department

Police officers in Sacramento, California, are using virtual reality to learn how to deal with implicit biases such as skin color. Officers face a citizen with a darker skin color in the training.

Police academy

In this multiplayer VR training, police use virtual reality goggles to learn how to enter a crime scene. Currently, four officers can learn the intricacies of the job under the guidance of an instructor. In the future we will scale up to 16 people and new features will be added.

Dutch police

We are currently developing two different training courses for the Dutch police. The first is a CPR training where the user learns how to act in case of cardiac arrest. The second is training the Dutch detectives how to enter a crime scene and look for evidence.

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