Fort Worth police keep it real in new training village

A police officer drunkenly stumbles across the bar, shouting that another took his money, another officer punches his neighbor in the mouth, and one officer admits to being in a gang.

Not really. Today, the officers are actors — quite good ones — in training scenarios for Fort Worth police recruits at the new $97 million Bob Bolen Public Safety Complex in south Fort Worth.

The complex provides joint training for the Fort Worth police and fire departments. A big section in the Police Department’s part is a 30,000-square-foot simulated village with a bank, convenience store and gas station, restaurant, apartments and a school.

Thirty-three recruits nervously clutch notepads as they “interview” the actors. They know that their superiors are watching, waiting to critique them and question their knowledge of the Texas Penal Code.

“I’m guessing how drunk he is — he has been here for days!” one actor-officer shouts, stumbling across the village’s restaurant, which for this exercise is a pretend bar.

He and another actor-officer are dressed in ball caps, T-shirts and jeans. One plays drunk while the other, who is accused by the drunkard of stealing $20, sits and looks on as two police recruits interview the men separately with notepads.

“He’s here for thirsty Thursday,” the “drunk” shouts, pointing his finger at the other.

Sgt. Eddie Trinidad, a 30-plus-year veteran of the department, is known as the “Mayor” at the tactical village — “but don’t tell Mayor Price,” he jokes.

Trinidad said the reality-based training is so new that he is still developing curriculum for it.

After the bar scene plays out, an instructor takes the recruits to the side and talks to them about how they handled the situation.

Should they have made any arrests?

Trinidad said the belligerent man should have been arrested for public intoxication because he was at the bar alone and unfit to drive.

“A lot of times, we have disturbances in restaurants,” Trinidad said. “How should the officer approach the situation with other people around?”

Active shooter scenarios

Speaker systems pipe screams and gunshots.

A school has new lockers, a principal’s office and classrooms filled with chairs donated by the Fort Worth school district. The setting is used to train officers how to handle reports of a gun or bomb at a school, Trinidad said.

The actor-officers pretend to be students while recruits size up the situation and act fast. One classroom has windows that are designed to be smashed in.

“Everything is not just ‘come in and shoot at a bad guy,’ ” Trinidad said. “You have to look and size up the situation. You can’t ignore it, but you don’t send in the cavalry.”

The Police Department just wrapped up joint training with MedStar and the Fire Department, Trinidad said.

“Officers said it was about time we did joint training,” he says.

MedStar spokesman Matt Zavadsky, in a later phone interview, agreed. “Joint training does not happen enough,” he said.

“Active threats are happening more and more in our nation, and we need to be prepared here in Fort Worth.”

Zavadsky said the village’s school, restaurant and store are all places where one might encounter what these first responders call “an active shooter situation.”

Fire Department Battalion Chief Richard Harrison helped coordinate the training.

“I think everybody’s roles are well defined,” Harrison said. “Police are used to going in and going after the bad guys. MedStar has mass casualty under control, but what we weren’t used to, what we were trying to get our heads around, was a situation where we’d have to enter a building with an active shooter.”

Firefighters might not be able to wait for police to give them the all-clear in the instance of an active shooter, Harrison said, or know how they get into a scene that has 30 police cars surrounding the building.

The feedback on joint training was positive, Harrison said, and now firefighters want to see the scenarios expanded and become more complex.

‘He slept with my wife’

Recruits walk up the steps to find a village apartment with knocked-over chairs and lamps, and an officer pretending to be a resident who was accosted.

“My neighbor Bill is accusing me of having sex with his wife. He rips my screen door off, breaks my mom’s vase, punches me in the lip,” the actor says.

The apartment has a living room, kitchen, bedroom and full bathroom. Wooden doors have sections by the doorknob that are reinforced with steel and 2-by-4s so recruits can practice breaking down doors at drug houses and in domestic violence situations.

The recruits ask the actor a few questions before going to the “neighbor’s” door, where they bang loudly.

“I got into it with my wife this morning and found out she’d been sleeping with him,” he tells them.

His knuckles are cut.

“Did you punch your neighbor?” they ask. He says he punched his bathroom wall.

One of the officers looks confused as if he’s not sure what to ask next. The instructor calls him to the side and tells him, “People are always going to tell you they didn’t do it.”

The instructor asks the recruits if they would arrest the man.

“Yes,” they say.

“On what charge?” the instructor asks.

“Assault?”

This is a tricky scenario, Trinidad said. The charge turns out to be burglary because the officers have evidence that the neighbor forced his way into the man’s apartment with the intent to commit a felony or assault.

They are trying to gauge the young officers’ understanding of the penal code.

‘I’m a documented gang member’

In another training scenario, two actors sit in a gray car outside an apartment. A concerned woman has called 911 to say the men had been sitting there for a while and she was growing suspicious.

The recruits approach the car where a red bandanna hangs over the rear-view mirror.

“If this is about us flying our flag, we can take it down,” one man tells the recruit.

He goes on to say that he and his buddy are waiting on a friend, and he acknowledges that Fort Worth police have their photos and names on record as gang members.

There’s not much police can do at this point if they are not violating any laws, Trinidad said.

But one actor acknowledges having a gun in the glove box.

“A documented gang member is not allowed to have a gun,” Trinidad whispers. The recruits discuss what to do next.

Smoke and smells

Before they had the village, which is made of steel, plywood and Sheetrock, officers were taught in classrooms where they had to use their imaginations to put themselves at the scene.

The village is equipped with 15 cameras that let the instructors watch the officers training. The cameras also record video that is shown later in class.

Lt. Bryan Jamison sits in the control room, where he points to the camera monitor. Jamison got furniture together for the village and found many of the sound effects.

This week, the administrators will start furnishing the village with phones, desks, computers and other supplies.

The smoke generators can be mixed with oils to make the room smell like gasoline or decomposing bodies, Jamison said. Three smoke generators fill the building with smoke in 10 minutes.

“This is really about disorienting” the recruits, he said.

Jamison says that using an iPad, officers can dim the lighting from dusk to dawn. The mock restaurant can be used as a bar, its lights shining bright against the dark streets wide enough to fit patrol cars inside the building.

Training for use of force

When the recruits near graduation in six months, they will face a different kind of training at the village: The actor-officers will start firing with fake bullets, Trinidad says.

This is where they will be confronted with situations involving deadly use of force and will have to think fast about survival.

Don’t pay enough attention to your partner?

He gets shot.

Let your guard down?

You get shot.

Officers playing criminals will shoot at recruits with training ammunition — small plastic pellets with powder inside.

Trinidad says the training is supposed to teach the officers to de-escalate force.

“If someone comes up to you with a stick, do you shoot them? No. You Mace them or maybe you taze them,” he says.

“We want to see what their appropriate use-of-force responses are,” he said.

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 6:47 PM with the headline "Fort Worth police keep it real in new training village."