Border Patrol Using Virtual Simulator To Train Agents On Use Of Force
The U.S. Border Patrol recently opened its usually secretive training procedures to public scrutiny, offering journalists a rare experience inside an agency simulator designed to train agents on what they can do to stop someone in the field and what they cannot do.
It's obvious the man sitting on the car hood ahead of me is going to make a move. He glares over my left shoulder at the agent running his plates. He chews his lips and his shoulders are visibly coiled. I have a pistol trained on him and I’m supposed to watch him while the agent checks him out.
The training simulation takes place in a massive simulator with screens that surround you, putting you right in the middle of the action. Simulation or no, it’s tense. The agent said two things. First she said, "watch him." I heard that. The second, I missed:
"Hey, it's positive for a stolen vehicle."
I didn’t hear her, I was watching this guy tense up ahead of me, trying to anticipate his move so we didn’t get shot.
Then he moved. He slides off the hood and heads toward the car window. Is it enough to shoot him? Or not?
Few easy answers to the questions that the Border Patrol is trying to resolve through training.
Last year, the agency installed 27 of these $350,000 machines at various sectors throughout the country. Tucson Sector, its largest on the Mexican border, has two. Agents here also use their wide variety of less-than-lethal weapons far more than nearly every other sector.
From October through July agents here have used weapons like tasers and pepper spray 102 times. That’s nearly double last year’s total. And the sector is second in the nation for using these devices. Some sectors haven't used them at all this year, Customs and Border Protection statistics show.
At the same time, agents in Tucson have used their guns four times in real incidents during the same period, more than any other sector.
As he prepares a pepper-ball-launching gun for a demonstration, firearms instructor Darian Sterns said all agents must carry one less-than-lethal weapon in addition to their firearm. Sterns prefers a telescoping baton.
"It’s more hands on that it ever was before. The subjects are running a lot more. I worked in Nogales where there’d be a group of 20 people and I’d say stop and they’d all stop. And now from me to you and they’re running. And before when they run, if I grabbed them, they would, okay, you got me. Now they’re resisting and actually pulling away, desperate to get away," he said.
The training simulation is based off a real scenario. In 2013, Border Patrol agents encountered Matthew Cheyenne Simmons on the side of the road in Hogg County, Texas. The car he was in came back as being stolen. The 28-year-old man fired on the agents, hitting one. A second agent fired and killed Simmons.
In front of me, the man on the simulator has made his move. I walk toward him and he ignores me, reaching into his car. I step closer, keeping my gun trained to his chest.
"Okay, okay, okay! Okay!" he shouts as he finally backs off the car and drops to his knees. The simulation ends.
Agent Tim Thomas analyzes my decisions.
"You looked fairly nervous. You said you didn't know if there was a crime, right? Did she ever tell you about a crime?"
She had, but I’d missed it.
"You’re not the only one who doesn’t hear that. It’s pretty common for people to be yelling at this guy in which case they didn’t hear that or the other side is they’re so laser focused on what this guy is doing, they get auditory exclusion they just don’t hear it."
So I missed the clear signal from the agent telling me she has very valid reasons to hold the guy, and I didn’t stop him from reaching into the window.
"You were aimed in at him. Do you think he’d be able to get rounds off before you did?
"No," I said.
"I almost guarantee you he could. Because you have to react to what you see here."
And that, Thomas said, was the point of the entire exercise.
