San Juan County Sheriff's Office get $90K for virtual reality simulator

An appropriations measure passed by Congress last week includes $90,000 for a virtual reality simulator for the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office to be used as part of the agency’s use-of-force training.

The funding was announced in a March 6 news release from the office of U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico, who helped secure the funding for the simulator. Altogether, Luján helped secure nearly $63 million for 74 projects across New Mexico that were included in the legislation.

“Today, I’m proud to announce Congressionally Directed Spending will soon be heading to New Mexico as part of the first package of appropriations bills,” Luján said in a statement released by his office. “Each of these projects represent a critical need where federal funding can make a difference for New Mexicans in every corner of the state, including our rural and Tribal communities. This initial appropriations package includes much-needed investments to boost the agriculture industry, support public safety efforts, improve health care, maintain our acequias and water infrastructure, and so much more.”

The virtual reality system identified by the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office in its grant request for the money is mobile, consisting of a headset, backpack, goggles, laptop and four pillars, which are to be deployed in a 30-foot-by-30-foot square pattern. After the officers don the equipment, they find themselves immersed in a three-dimensional platform that features dozens of customizable aspects.

Those aspects include locations such as neighborhoods, schools, parking lots, shopping centers and traffic stops, as well as characters who look like and act out the characteristics of their role, such as mentally ill, aggressive, despondent or under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. Those combinations can form hundreds of unique scenario opportunities, according to the grant request.

Sheriff’s Office officials say the new VR equipment would replace the current use-of-force training platform, an approximately 10-year-old system that consists of an officer interacting with a projector screen that displays prerecorded actors. While the actors can talk, yell or even charge the officer, the scenarios unfold in a two-dimensional world and the actions are prerecorded, regardless of the officer’s response. Those limitations sap the training of its fluidity and reality, according to the grant request.

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Additionally, the simulated force tools available to officers in that training platform such as pepper spray, taser and duty weapons have connectivity and operational glitches, the grant request states. The system is used not just by Sheriff’s Office personnel, but by the regional police academy, which trains cadets from across the northwest corner of the state.

The new training platform provides for scenarios that change depending on how the officer reacts, according to the grant proposal. The realistic animated characters can move in three-dimensional space around the officer while bystanders react on the periphery of the situation, including scenarios in which they flee the scene or pull out their cellular phones to record the officer.

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The scenarios are designed to be resolved through various means ranging from de-escalation to the use of deadly force. The system even senses when an officer touches an animated subject, leading that subject to react accordingly, the grant request states.

“The level of technology and reality provided with realistic talking, appropriately interacting animated characters, takes the training to a near real-life experience,” the grant proposal states. “It will undoubtedly help us produce higher trained and conditioned officers. Without it, we are left with limited, aged technology and failing equipment.”

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

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This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: San Juan County Sheriff's Office gets $90K for VR simulator