It is 5 a.m. on a Tuesday morning at a police substation in Tucson, Arizona. Inside the warehouse area where vehicles are often stored, a screaming man with a gas can begins to pour its contents over his head. Bystanders are yelling at two officers as they arrive. “Do something; he’s going to kill himself; help him!” The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette lighter; he says, “I am going to kill myself, stay back, I don’t want to hurt you,” but his words are barely audible over the witnesses’ shouting. The bystanders appear to be acquainted with the individual and are clearly in the way of the officers, trying to talk the individual down and ignoring the officers’ requests to leave the area. After physically moving the bystanders from the immediate scene, one of the officers looks to his partner and tells him “Go to the trunk of your car and get the fire extinguisher while I try to de-escalate him.” The officer starts by introducing himself to the man and asks what’s going on that would make the man want to kill himself. The officer continues to engage the man in dialogue for several minutes, but it is to no avail. Just as the man prepares to strike his lighter the other officer returns to the room with a fire extinguisher in hand. He points the extinguisher near the man’s feet and… “End scenario” rings out.
This brings the role players to a stop, and they leave the floor to reset for the next “show,” while the training officers begin to teach from the lessons learned in the acted-out scene. “Did you hear what he said?” “Would you taser someone who has gasoline on their person?” “Would igniting the fluid cause an explosion or simply create flames?” The officers are encouraged to share their thoughts on either how the responding officers reacted or what they could have done better, and the point of the training is made clear. The next scene, although still involving a man with a gas can, will play out just a little differently because people are always slightly different in how they act and react, and that is the real point of using community role players.
Mandatory Training at TPD
As in any city, there are both positive and negatives interactions between police officers and the community members in Tucson, Arizona, but the Tucson Police Department’s (TPD’s) training academy staff have taken proactive steps to build stronger relationships between the two groups. One of these steps has been a change in the manner officers receive mandatory training—in particular, adding the use of community role players in reality-based scenarios and the implementation of a new training modality referred to as “The Road Show.” TPD is made up of 850+ sworn employees and nearly 250 professional staff team members. Continuously training such a large number of employees on a regular basis is no small feat, and it was this realization that led the department to evolve its training program. The training staff explored ways to grow the training program while also growing the relationship with their community The answer was to build a vibrant community role player program and implement a more agile system to conduct timely training.
Prior to 2016, mandatory training was accomplished in much the same way as it is at many other departments. Officers were told to take time off from their regular shifts and report to a specific training location for a full day of training. Groups of officers would be taken through myriad didactic exercises, followed by scenario training that involved either the use of a training simulator, manikins, props, or role players. Each time officers went out for training, they saw the same training officers, in the same training rooms. They were with their peers and although new information was presented, the officers would sometimes treat the training as “same thing, different day.”
Engaging Officers & the Community
In June 2016, Captain Chris Dennison was a lieutenant and serving as the advanced training commander of the TPD Academy. He saw the need to transition from classroom-style block training toward more live, reality-based scenarios. He thought incorporating community members into the process would be a way not only to help them better understand what goes on behind the scenes of law enforcement, but also to help foster stronger relationships between community members and their local officers. The idea had been tried before in several parts of the United States, but, following a tragic incident in which a community role player was shot and killed when an officer had live rounds at a training academy in Florida, the concept became considerably less popular.1
Previously, TPD, like many other agencies, had used departmental “actors” to play parts in training scenarios, but as they were either fellow officers or training department personnel, those individuals had been seen many times before by the officers and staff being trained, which led to a lack of engagement in some scenarios. Those agency role players could also unintentionally give clues as to the correct action required or allow for minor mistakes to go uncorrected due to familiarity with the officer or situation. This, then, provided for only minimum competency in the training topic. Paid role players had also been sometimes used for their consistency; however, there are numerous costs associated to this approach. In addition, scheduling and safety concerns can arise. More important, neither in-house or paid actors carry the added benefit of community participation and the opportunity for relationship building between the agency and the community.
Once the decision was made to use community role players, TPD used an innovative approach to develop a community role player cadre. Because of the stated desire to incorporate the community and its police department in a “joint” venture, the department conducted extensive community outreach to locate interested volunteers. The first group of interested community members was found through ads placed in local websites such as Nextdoor and other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. An introductory meeting was held at the police academy with a turnout of 30–50 people, of whom, following accepted applications and criminal background checks, around 20 were accepted into the first group. These community participants were told that TPD held their time in the highest value and was happy to make use of whatever availability they had. The community members were able to sign up when they were available, and there was no minimum time they were required to remain in the program. If they were interested in helping, then there was a role for them in the training. In other words, these community members were wanted and needed.
“Some community role players have gone on to join the Tucson Police Volunteers program and others have joined the department as community service officers.”
During the first year, most of the scenario training was held at the police academy. Large groups of role players would go out and be assigned to one of three or four scenarios, while large blocks of officers went from scene to scene. Everything from bar fights, to snipers, to elderly lady drivers without their licenses was set up at one time or another. The officers were not engaged at first, bringing the same attitude from mandated training into the new community role player version. Many thought the new training method would quickly fade, and they would be back to the old familiar ways. The first few cycles saw a change in attitude as the training attendees began to see role players were not always going to have the expected response. In all honesty, when a live person in front of an officer drops after they have fired their “sims” (simunitions) weapon, the mindset changes fairly rapidly to the question of “Is this real?” By the end of the first year, the officers were showing considerably more engagement, caution, and care in how they approached the scenarios, much like as in real life.
The Road Show
The second year of the advanced training program saw the initiation of “The Road Show.” Rather than taking the hours (and associated costs) of bringing the officers to the academy, The Road Show takes the training to them. Several times a day, over several weeks in a training cycle, role players respond to subdivision stations to act out the planned training scenarios for groups of officers before or after their shifts. This takes much less time and is a major cost savings in staff, energy, and money. In these cases, depending on the number of officers that signed up that day, only a handful of individuals go into the scenario while the balance watch it play out. After “end scenario” is called, the training officers have a series of questions and demonstrations pertinent to the current scene. It is short and succinct, and the officers go back to their lives with less than an hour spent out of the field.
Safety
One of the many important qualities of The Road Show is its safety process. All scenario training areas, whether the large academy grounds or local stations, have a minimum of two safety officers. They are responsible for physically verifying that there are no weapons on any of the officers, sims weapons are truly sims or blanks, and role players are also weapon free. They provide safety eyewear and ear protection for all on the training floor, as well as loaning out knee pads or rubber gloves when needed. Once the training group, officers, and role players have been cleared, no one else is allowed to enter the training area until the scenario is completed.
Because complacency can occur and safety checks can become less stringent, role players are encouraged to speak up if they feel safety has been compromised. This recognition of joint concern has led to a further development of placing some of the role players in positions of securing area entrances. Safety is further assured by a constant vigilance during training; welfare checks occur after each scenario and first aid or EMT-level officers are on hand in case injuries occur. At the time of this writing, there have been no safety issues or complaints from either the officers or community member role players.
Training Scenarios
Each month a new scenario is developed with lesson plans and objectives and ultimately signed off as part of the continuing education requirements of Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (AZ POST). Role players are given specific actions critical to the training in each scenario. For instance, some role players may be told “block the officers” or “be distractions,” while others may be told “fall to the ground as soon as you hear shots” or “just keep running until you are out of their sight.” Working out so many lesson plans and conducting so many scenarios may seem a somewhat labor intensive for the training staff, but they recognize the value of this training. They are contacted by officers and command staff regularly to affirm their support of this training style over traditional block training. The benefits can be seen in the field, too. During debriefs of major incidents (officer-involved shootings, protests, pursuits, etc.), the involved officers often state it was their training that led to the incident’s successful outcome. The lessons learned from those debriefs are also used to create new training or supplement existing training as necessary. The Road Show is also supported by current research into training methods, which has shown that “learning in bite-sized pieces makes the transfer of learning from classroom to desk or field work 17 percent more efficient.”2
Community Participation
As noted earlier, during the current process of “hiring” community role players, an application of interest is filled out and a criminal background check is completed for all interested persons. For those who move forward in the process, a face-to-face interview is completed either at the initial interest meeting or during the training for role players. Although there have been a few individuals who did not pass the vetting process, most who have shown interest have been accepted. The role players have come from all walks of life, are in every age group, and are a vital part of TPD’s ongoing trainings. Their position is so important that an additional “hiring” was held to increase the roster of available community role players. Role players are used in ongoing training such as The Road Show, but they are also now used in active shooter scenarios staged for non-sworn employees to familiarize them with what a similar situation might look like. Role players are used for basic recruit training, high-risk and unknown risk stop training, and continuing education for all sworn employees. The program started out small and has grown into what it is today—a strong support system to the training section and a pipeline to the department itself. Some community role players have gone on to join the Tucson Police Volunteers program and others have joined the department as community service officers.
It was estimated that in the first year alone the use of community role players saved the city some 3,000 hours (approximately $700,000) in manpower. The volunteers seem to enjoy their interaction with the officers, and although the volunteers are recognized with an annual volunteer appreciation dinner, that is not why they do it. They have a personal investment in the training and continued competency of their police department; they are an integral and wanted part of the training process. Every community member who volunteers their time to this program reinforces the fact that the Tucson community values its officers and its police department. d
Notes:
1Katie Rogers, “Woman Is Accidentally Killed by Police Officer Playing ‘Bad Guy’ at Training Academy in Florida,” New York Times, August 10, 2016.
2Richard Beary, “Strengthening the Foundation: How New Trends in Training Can Improve Officers’ Safety and Effectiveness,” Police Chief Online, November 7, 2018.
Please cite as
Barbara J. Wise and Corey Doggett, “The Road Show: Using Community Role Players to Advance Training,” Police Chief Online, April 13, 2022.
