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Capt. Harvey Powers leads a simulation program at the Richmond Police Department's training academy. (Photo by Sarah Lockwood)
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Capt. Harvey Powers talks with University of Richmond law students attending a simulation session at the Richmond Police Department's training academy. (Photo by Sarah Lockwood)
Editor's note: This story is an online companion to the "Under Fire" feature in our April issue.
On a brisk Tuesday in early February, five women and one male companion — all University of Richmond law students in their mid-20s, chattering and seemingly a little unsure of what to expect — are huddled inside the Richmond Police Department training facility off West Graham Road. It’s a bright, breezy afternoon outside; across the street, Virginia Union University students are scuttling to and from classes — but inside this room, it’s dim.
A large, wall-length, floor-to-ceiling screen faces the group A few yards between the students and the screen is a platform with a Taser, pepper spray and a .357-caliber handgun — all three gutted and outfitted with a laser instead.
“We meet at this incredibly difficult time in law enforcement history, right now,” police Capt. Harvey Powers says to the group sitting in front of him, referring to the stepped-up scrutiny of police actions nationally after a series of fatal shootings of unarmed African-Americans in recent years.
After he finishes a brief introduction and instructions, the students approach the screen one by one and engage in a simulation where they are responding to different calls for service. Some are relatively benign — a belligerent man peeing on a dumpster, for example — while others are more serious: a domestic violence call, a school shooter or a traffic stop where a woman reaches for a handgun, to name a few.
Each student is tasked with de-escalating the situation without using force unnecessarily. Depending on what a participant says, or how he or she acts, Powers will cue a different response from the actors on the screen. This is called a MILO (for multiple interactive learning objectives) simulation, and it's the same exercise used to train police recruits on the appropriate use of force.
In one scenario, a law student is confronted by an agitated man wielding a rock. The student doesn’t act quickly enough, and the simulated result is that he is abruptly bludgeoned to death by the rock-wielding man. Powers explains that had the student shot the man, he would have been considered “unarmed.”
“Cops are being really bastardized for the situations they're finding themselves in … In the media world, if you don't have a knife or a gun, you're described as unarmed — but that doesn't mean [a shooting by police is unjustified],” Powers explains.
He tells the group that the “key to winning” as a cop is knowing what people have in their hands at all times.
“If you don’t know what somebody is holding, tell them to put it down,” Powers says. “Nobody ever pulled a trigger with an elbow or swung a knife with a knee; it all comes from the hands. Anytime I don't know what your hands are doing — it could be totally innocuous — that's a potential threat to me. You don't want to be on the losing end of a misunderstanding.”
This is precisely where the line blurs between acceptable and unacceptable practice. In one simulation, the student “officer” responds to a domestic violence call where a woman is outside, visibly upset.
A man approaches from the side of the house and orders the overwrought woman back inside; he is angry, shouting about how the police have already been called to the home several times, and ignoring repeated requests to show his hands. Instead, the man reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a black object roughly the size of his fist. In a split second, he’s bringing the object around to the front of his body toward the “officer.”
The “officer” doesn’t fire, and by the time it’s fully visible that what this livid, middle-aged man is pulling out is a wallet rather than a gun, the man could have fired a shot.
Would it have been justified for an officer to discharge a weapon in this situation?
“Remember, we're not allowed to make mistakes, because if we do, it's on body camera and it'll be commemorated for the rest of our life,” Powers says. “You will see, quickly, when you're put in a scenario where you have to use deadly force how quickly things happen. We do not have time to go, 'Oh, wait, hold on.' ”
The consequences of a split-second decision do not dissipate as quickly as it takes to fire a weapon. Powers tells the group he couldn’t sleep for six months after being involved in a shooting during a traffic stop — statistically the most dangerous situations officers find themselves in on a daily basis.
But for civilians on the other side of a car window, this cautious perspective doesn’t diminish the fear of being the next victim of a police interaction gone wrong — examples of which have been memorialized by video streams and the occasionally released body- or dash-cam footage.
Yesha Callahan, managing editor for The Root online publication, says her 18-year-old son is still recovering from a traffic stop, his first ever, by Chesterfield County police for rolling through a right turn on red as he was heading back to Virginia State University’s campus in February.
“My son had his hands up, him and his passenger, they both had their hands up … so they had him out of the car and they asked him if he had anything illegal on him, and he was like, 'No,' but he had a pocket knife, so he reached for it.”
Within seconds, the officer standing opposite Callahan’s son was pointing his gun at the 18-year-old student. Body-worn camera footage depicts roughly 30 seconds of clamoring before Callahan’s son was handcuffed against the car, his passenger still sitting inside.
“So, [they] told them not to ever reach for anything … and because he reached it made [the officer] nervous,” Callahan recounts. “I just don't understand the accepted use of force. Like, why are you a jumpy cop? You could have pulled out a Taser, you could've pulled out anything else besides your gun,” Callahan says.
The officers proceeded to search the vehicle after claiming they smelled marijuana, and a little more than 10 minutes later, the student and his passenger were let go without a ticket — but the effect of the encounter still weighs on him.
“He’s paranoid, pretty much, to drive around the area,” Callahan says of her son, adding, “He has the car because he works, so he doesn't really want to stay in that area for school anymore.”
The Chesterfield Police Department has repeatedly stated that the encounter complied with policy and was justified.
At the Richmond training facility, Powers acknowledges that officers do make mistakes — and he attributes "bad shoots” not necessarily to an implicit racial bias, but to blood pressure. Police officers, like anyone else, have a fight-or-flight response that kicks in when confronted with a real or perceived threat.
During the simulation, students expressed myriad symptoms related to increased blood pressure when confronted by a threat on the video screen. They spoke of stiffening muscles, pounding heart rate or throbbing head, tunnel vision, and/or not fully processing what the person in the simulation before them was actually saying.
“We’ve seen some bad decisions by police officers on video recently, and no cop worth their salt would look at that and try to defend it,” Powers says. “But I would guarantee you in every single one of those situations — not as an excuse, but as an explanation — a lot of those guys were freaking out. And their blood left their brain and they were making really instinctual decisions.”
While fearing for your life or someone else’s is the only justifiable reason for using lethal force, Powers says an officer will still probably have to justify that action to a court.
“Not to mention, you killed someone,” Powers says. “And you're going to have to figure that out. I have been there with officers who have killed people, and it is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
