MANSFIELD — I looked right and then left as I moved down the school hallway, searching for what a victim told me were three gunmen.
I walked past bodies of dead and wounded students and adults, my own heart racing. Within a matter of seconds, one after another, the three armed gunmen came at me. I shot and killed each one.
Glancing further ahead, I saw an adult pull a female student into a doorway, yelling to “Stay back!”
Moving down the hallway and approaching the doorway, I implored the adult to throw the gun down and talk to me.
“No one else needs to die today,” I said.
As I reached the doorway, I realized the hostage-taker was a woman, who had a gun against the head of the student. Even as I told her to drop the weapon, she pulled the trigger, killing the student.
My own shots in response came seconds too late to save the student.
Thankfully, this was not real life. It was just another training scenario on the new Mansfield Police Department Multiple Interactive Learning Objectives (MILO) simulator.
Make no mistake. I am not a law enforcement officer. Never had any law enforcement training. I have some experience training on the range with guns in the military. I grew up hunting rabbits, squirrels and deer in southeast Ohio.
But thanks to MPD Chief Keith Porch and Lt. Shane Gearhart, I got a taste of what law enforcement officers may face on any given day.
Imagine you are a police officer facing a man armed with a gun. What if you were that same officer on a traffic stop and the female driver suddenly brandishes a knife? Or perhaps you are dispatched on a domestic violence call and arrive to find a fight in progress?
What would you do?
The MILO simulator, inside the refurbished former MPD indoor shooting range, provides Mansfield police officers the chance to practice and use de-escalation techniques and appropriate use of force in a controlled environment — before they encounter the same issues in real life.
Often, an officer must make a split-second, potentially fatal decision.
It’s the latest technology Porch has brought to the department since taking over as chief in 2019, a list that includes body-worn cameras on officers, ShotSpotter gunfire detection and license-plate reader cameras.
When the chief told me in 2021 of the Richland County Foundation grant that helped purchase the MILO, he also said, “If (an officer) makes a mistake, I would rather it be in training rather than on the streets.”
Lord knows I made a lot of mistakes during about a half-dozen different simulations. School shootings. Domestic violence. Emotionally disturbed people. People armed with guns. People armed with knives. Unarmed people.
After each scenario, Porch and Gearhart patiently went over what went right, what went wrong and offered advice on what I could have done differently.
The MILO is not just a “shoot/don’t shoot” training device. It’s a lot more than that with three wide viewing panels that put an officer inside the moment. It offers an officer the chance to de-escalate situations before any kind of force is used.
It’s used by law enforcement agencies around the country, as well as the FBI and the U.S. military.
I learned quickly my voice, my tone and my words were my first, best tool — far better options than a gun, taser or tear gas. Empathy goes a lot further than violence.
As I moved through each simulation, Gearheart altered the simulation from his keyboard behind me. If I was successfully talking with a subject, as I did with a troubled man in a gym, the situation ended peacefully.
“As long as you’re making good voice commands, good responses. And if it turns into a use of a force, maybe it’s not a deadly use of force, but now we’re going to less lethal, OC, tasers,” Porch said.
“The ultimate goal is to get verbal compliance. That we have zero force,” the chief said.
Sometimes, however, no words were enough. As Gearhart told me, ultimately de-escalation is up to the person with whom you are talking. Sometimes, there are times no words will suffice.
I encountered a loud and verbal domestic dispute between a man and a woman in a small motel room. As I tried to get them to calm down, I saw the woman pick up a large knife.
I asked her to put it down. I implored her to put it down. I demanded she put it down, my voice rising. She suddenly turned toward me and attacked me with the knife.
I managed to shoot her, but the screen turned red, indicating she had successfully stabbed me.
It was then I learned of the “21-foot rule,” which indicates a person with a knife inside that range can attack an officer in about 1.5 seconds — before the officer has time to pull his own weapon.
I painfully realized in speaking with Porch and Gearhart that lethal force was the correct option once I realized she had the knife so close and was not listening to my commands.
I am not certain I would, or could, have ever chosen that option.
I realized again there are no winners in domestic disputes. It’s the worst kind of situation for a police officer.Â
My mind flashed back to a ride-along I did with Cambridge, Ohio, police almost 40 years ago.
As the officer I was accompanying escorted a husband out of his house in handcuffs for assaulting his wife, that same woman ran out from the kitchen and smacked the officer in the back with a cast-iron skillet.
“Where are you taking my husband?!” the woman screamed.
The stunned officer turned to her and said, “Jail. The same place you are now going.”
The debriefing by Porch and Gearhart after each scenario was incredibly valuable. Every Mansfield police officer, from veterans to rookies, will become better at their jobs through the MILO simulator.
What could the officer have done differently? What could he or she have said differently? How could the law enforcement response have been improved?
And it’s not just for MPD officers. Porch is making the $155,000 simulator training available to every law enforcement officer in Richland County.
His own officers, who live-fire train at the department’s outdoor gun range and classroom training facility, will now incorporate the simulator training at the same time.
As I left the department afterward, the school-shooting scenario kept running through my head. A student died because I hesitated to take a shot at the hostage-taker that could have hit the victim instead.
Porch asked me, as the “officer” on the scene, was I confident in my skill level to have taken the shot?
“Ultimately, if your shot kills the hostage, would that affect you?” the chief asked.
Yes. For the rest of my life.
Just as it would if I had just stood there and watched the victim be shot in the head.
There was no good decision sometimes and an officer has to live with that choice.
Driving away, I also realized I made the right career choice many years ago to be a journalist. The men and women in law enforcement face the kinds of decisions the rest of us can only imagine.
And they won’t always be in a simulator.
