Training simulator helps Wichita police determine when to use lethal force

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the Wichita Police Department’s policy regarding use of force. Lt. Chris Halloran tells new recruits that during confrontations in which use of force is necessary, officers should shoot to stop a threat.

Pastor Cristian Alvarado of Wichita died twice at the law enforcement training academy.

He failed in other ways as well.

He stood motionless as a crime suspect shot a police officer and ran away. But he finally killed a man who beat his wife and then aimed a handgun at Alvarado.

Alvarado, the pastor at the Encuentro Con Cristo Church in Wichita, walked away alive, but shaken.

His deaths occurred safely, in video-simulation training scenarios conducted by the Wichita Police Department’s chief firearms training officers a few days ago.

But those scenarios left him sweating and stunned.

“My heart was pounding,” Alvarado said.

“But I believe police should be responsible,” he told Wichita police Lt. Chris Halloran.

Halloran nodded.

“Police should act responsibly,” he told Alvarado.

“But you got shot because you hesitated.”

‘Like stage fright’

Police had asked Alvarado to go through their simulation training to learn first-hand as a civilian what it is like to handle confrontations as a police officer.

When Halloran dressed for work on the morning that he watched Alvarado die in those simulations, he put on his belt, which held his police department badge, which was encircled by a black cloth band.

Every one of the 650 sworn officers with the Wichita Police Department put those black bands around their badges on July 7, the day Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and murdered five police officers in Dallas. The black bands honor the dead.

Police commanders in Wichita told their officers to remove the bands a few days later. But on July 17, Gavin Long ambushed and murdered three more officers in Baton Rouge, La.

And on July 19, a crime suspect being hunted by police murdered Capt. Robert Melton of the Kansas City, Kan., police department. So 650 Wichita police officers left those black bands on.

Halloran is the rangemaster for the Wichita Police Department at the Wichita/Sedgwick County Law Enforcement Firearm Range.

He has heard a lot of talk in the news and on social media about officers who some people say fire unnecessarily on people they encounter, especially people of color.

It bothers him. He says the vehement criticisms of police have strained police morale.

He thinks most police shootings happen not because of racism or poor training but because the people who get shot fail to comply with officers’ commands.

Recruits to the Wichita Police Department are required to take the training. Halloran has supervised the training of hundreds of new officers.

None of them want to kill people, he said. In fact, in recruiting class after recruiting class, year after year, Halloran says the number one lethal mistake most new recruits make is that they hesitate in those gun scenarios.

“They just stand there, like stage fright,” he said.

“I tell them over and over that their number one job as a police officer is to go home alive,” Halloran said.

Halloran has more than a professional interest in training new officers.

His father, Jim, was a motorcycle police officer for years in Wichita. His son, Jason, just became a Wichita officer.

Halloran doesn’t like putting on those black bands.

Be responsible, he tells recruits.

But if necessary, shoot to stop the threat.

Police shootings

James Thompson is a Wichita attorney who represents the families of five people shot by police, three of them by Wichita officers. He has five current lawsuits on behalf of the families.

The Wichita cases he sued police over involved those of Karen Jackson, killed July 10, 2012; Troy Lanning, killed April 2012; and Stacy Richard, shot 16 times by Wichita police on Feb. 25, 2014.

Thompson has never gone through the police confrontation simulations Halloran runs. But he knows a lot about a number of real shootings by Wichita police. He said he has reviewed the records.

From years of studying the details in those records, Thompson said he developed a deep respect for Wichita police, coupled with a few concerns.

“We hold police officers on a pedestal for a reason: They protect us,” he said. “But because we do hold them in such high regard, we hold them accountable when they abuse that position.”

Police departments today confront many challenges, many of which are not their fault, Thompson said.

“We expect our police officers to be counselors, protectors, lawyers in some cases – to be everything that is needed in a given moment,” he said. “Officers are not equipped or trained to deal with some of those issues.”

For example, police officers encounter many mentally ill people on the streets, Thompson said.

We expect officers to act as mental health professionals, Thompson said. They are not.

“Our politicians need to set up systems to deal with these problems,” he said.

But there is one failing he sees in many police departments, he said: “When cops don’t call out bad cops, it hurts everybody by creating distrust.”

He thinks some shootings by police that prompted national protests happened because of what he called implicit bias.

“Implicit bias is not outright racism,” Thompson said. “But implicit bias is the assumption, held by some officers, that this person of color is up to no good.

“They need to work harder to address that problem better.”

The white light

The first time Alvarado, the pastor, “died” and saw the white light in those training simulations was when he pretended to be a police officer, with Halloran looking on.

He walked into a simulated bar and confronted a drunk man. The drunk picked up a handgun on the bar and waved it around.

Alvarado, his hands at his sides and his gun holstered, pleaded with him to put down the gun.

The drunk suddenly aimed at Alvarado, who continued to plead.

Bang! Bang! The drunk man fired. Alvarado drew his weapon and shot back.

The screen went brilliant white.

Alvarado was dead.

The training instructors re-ran the video for Alvarado in slow motion. They showed him that not only had he hesitated fatally, but also both shots he fired at the drunk had missed, hitting the floor around the drunk man’s feet.

Alvarado said he fired low because he was trying to hit the man’s legs and disable him, while sparing his life.

Halloran and the other training instructors looked at Alvarado for a few moments in silence. Then Halloran spoke.

If officers did that in real shootings, he said, they would likely end up dead.

‘Scared all the time’

Kelly Otis is a Wichita police officer who has survived two real-life shootings. He once shot a man who shot at him.

He’s the chief investigator for Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett. But he’s still a commissioned police officer and still carries a handgun.

He refused to talk about those two shootings.

But he spent years as a patrol officer. And he said he has studied police shootings for years, here and nationally.

Many shootings take place in the dark, where officers can’t see clearly, he said.

Most shootings take place from a distance of only 3 to 5 feet, in only three to five seconds, he said. And officers have only a fraction of those three to five seconds to decide whether to shoot.

“Police officers are scared all the time in those situations,” Otis said. “It’s a very scary moment.

“You are looking at what might be the end of your life. There’s not only the fear of losing your life, but the fear of making a bad decision. Police officers have that fear all the time.”

He often urges prosecutors, police critics, attorneys who sue police and others to undergo the simulation training that Halloran supervises.

Otis thinks they are great training tools and could teach other people how hard it is for police officers to do a shooting correctly.

Split-second decisions

When Wichita police Officer Jon Forred stepped forward with a gun in his holster a few days ago, he did what the department’s instructors trained him to do almost 17 years ago.

Halloran and the other instructors had set up a simulation training scenario for Forred where a man with a snow shovel spoke angrily to Forred.

Forred yelled repeatedly at the man to put the shovel down. When the man ran at him and raised the shovel, Forred fired four quick shots.

Three hit the man in the head.

“Jon is one of our better shots,” Halloran said.

In the next scenario, Forred chased a woman with a gun in a back yard. He took cover just in time; the woman led him in to an ambush.

A second woman rounded a corner and fired three shots in Forred’s direction. Forred fired four times, knocking her down with three shots to her torso.

He missed only once.

But minutes later, in another scenario, Forred did something different.

It started when he stopped a murder suspect for questioning on a city street. The man got belligerent and spoke angrily.

Forred commanded the suspect to keep his hands out in the open.

“Get your hands out of your pockets!”

The man got more angry. And then, in a heart-stopping moment, the man quickly reached for something in the back of his pants.

Many people in that scenario might open fire, Halloran said later. The man was a murder suspect. His hand went to the back of his pants in a fraction of a second.

Forred had drawn his gun, which was aimed at the center of the suspect’s chest.

But Forred held his fire.

The man pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He walked away alive.

Halloran grinned.

Forred holstered his gun, his face expressionless.

With his life on the line, he had decided in a micro-second that the man was not a threat.

The Wichita police badge Forred wore was wrapped in a black band.

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 7:11 PM with the headline "Training simulator helps Wichita police determine when to use lethal force."