Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

A Sun reporter gets crash course in Metro use-of-force training. Here’s what he learned

LVMPD Reality Based Training

Christopher DeVargas

Las Vegas Sun reporter Ricardo Torres-Cortez utilizes at tactical shield to approach a threat, along with RJ reporter Katelyn Newberg and Fox 5’s Joe Vigil, during an LVMPD Reality Based Training scenario, Thursday June 10, 2021. The purpose of this closed media event is to simulate the mental and physical stresses that officers face on duty, while showing how the department trains officers to handle situations that require escalation, or de-escalation, of force.

LVMPD Reality Based Training

Las Vegas Sun reporter Ricardo Torres-Cortez utilizes at tactical shield while approaching a threat during an LVMPD Reality Based Training scenario, Thursday June 10, 2021. The purpose of this closed media event is to simulate the mental and physical stresses that officers face on duty, while showing how the department trains officers to handle situations that require escalation, or de-escalation, of force.

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Metro Police officials promised us that nobody was going to get hurt. 

I was among a group of reporters role-playing as officers in a reality-based shooting drill at a nondescript training center in east Las Vegas, getting a glimpse of what law enforcement encounter in the field.

The suspect we were pursuing in the mock traffic stop was an actor. The blue guns we carried fired blanks.

Nothing to be afraid of, right? 

Yet, when the sounds of gunshots initially rang out — even with training officers guiding every step — you couldn’t help feeling jumpy.

The simulations were held Thursday morning in a warehouse that houses a replicated apartment complex staircase and a small casino, along with other smaller rooms. 

This is where most Metro officers and their supervisors conduct 25 to 30 hours of reality-based training as a team each year. The exercises, which differ every year, are based on real-life situations or trends seen in Las Vegas and across the U.S. 

Officers who open fire during actual incidents are required to obtain additional training in which they replicate the scenarios before they’re cleared to come back from administrative leave. 

Exercises in the future will move to a much larger, 150,000-square-foot Reality Based Training Center being constructed in North Las Vegas by the LVMPD Foundation. The new facility will accommodate many more officers at one time, in addition to personnel from a plethora of agencies and their partners. 

It will have a climate-controlled tactical training area with locales including a gas station, casino and bank. It will also have classrooms and simulators. 

In the first scenario Thursday morning, two journalists riding in a Metro SUV pulled over a suicidal man who had been harassing his ex-girlfriend by sending her pictures of his gun and violating a restraining order.

Immediately after the car stopped, the man popped the trunk, jumped out, grabbed a gun, and started shooting. The reporter duo scrambled and fired back. The suspect went down. 

I role-played as a backup officer initially observing from behind the scene. Built up adrenaline made it difficult to recollect the simulated shootout. It felt like a blur, as did the following couple of minutes, when with a gun in my right hand, and a 35-pound shield on the other arm, I led my colleagues forward to disarm the suspect and make sure there was no other threat inside the car. 

The exercise — like the other two showcased by Metro — was based on a real event, which occurred in September, but without the lethal implications.  

During that call, the gunman and officers exchanged 19 rounds, which hit no one. That night, the officers “reacted exactly how they were trained, and they were able to get down, go low and be able to avoid the gunfire,” Assistant Sheriff Brett Zimmerman said at the time. 

In the second scenario, reporters dealt with a man armed with a frying pan and a knife. That was based on a Texas incident in which the man lunged at officers, cutting one of them before he was fatally shot. 

A Metro trainer guided the reporters so that the outcome was resolved with less-lethal tools. 

The third incident involved participants dealing with a pair of drunken patrons in a bar. One was asleep and his friend grew combative when they tried to wake him up to kick him out. The distraught patron was fake-stunned with a Taser. Reporters were instructed to turn him over on his side after he pretended to fall unconscious. 

The media event coincided with the release of Metro’s Use of Force and Vehicle Pursuit Annual Five-Year Statistical Report with data collected through 2020. Last year, Metro responded to more than 1.4 million calls for service, which included 19 police shootings involving 19 armed suspects, police said. 

That year, Metro officers also deployed “nondeadly use of force” in 940 incidents, police said.  

The drills were preceded and followed by a classroom presentation in which police officials highlighted the always-changing training, officer tools, and use-of-force scenarios. They walked reporters through Metro’s Use of Force Model that charts de-escalation tactics and when officers are allowed to escalate a scenario depending on a suspect’s actions.

Metro Undersheriff Christopher Darcy hopes our audiences learn about the significant amount of training officers go through from the time they’re in the academy and throughout their careers. 

“These bedrocks and those foundations in policing,” he said. “Our policies (and) training of our employees (are) the most important thing right now. We want to reduce the amount of force we use on these incidents.”

Members of the media typically arrive at use-of-force scenes after the fact, with yellow police tape and distance blocking the view. Mostly every time, we gather at Metro headquarters days later, where officials broadcast body-camera footage. That makes it difficult to recognize the “split-second” decisions officers make during deadly action. 

However, it would be flawed to assume that we could relate on Thursday to what officers feel before or after they pull the trigger, either during simulated or real scenarios. After all, they have hundreds of hours of training and it’s what they signed up for, while we are typically only armed with phone recorders, cameras, questions and computers.

And it’s not what Metro wanted you to get out of it, Sgt. Miguel Garcia said.

But a small taste of the high-stress scenarios might help the community better understand officers and their work, particularly during fraught police-community relations across the U.S., which triggered mass demonstrations after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. 

“We are functioning people in society, we are just like everybody else,” Metro spokesman Officer Larry Hadfield said. “We are husbands, we are parents, we are sons and daughters — don’t pass judgment on us all because of one single event you see on YouTube or TV.”

Ricardo Torres-Cortez has been covering public safety, including Metro Police, since he joined the Sun in 2016.