By Brandi Watters
The Herald Bulletin
PENDLETON, Ind. — Corrections officers at the Pendleton Correctional Facility were transformed into actors on Wednesday as they acted out scenarios for a film which will eventually be used to train their colleagues.
The Indiana Department of Corrections made history this week as the first corrections system in the nation to pilot the filming and production of actual facility-based emergency scenarios.
IDOC hired the Canadian Academy of Practical Shooting, or CAPS, to produce the sequences filmed across the spectrum of IDOC.
Prior to Wednesday’s film shoot in Pendleton, CAPS had shot other scenarios with real corrections officers at the New Castle Correctional Facility. Organizations also involved included the Correctional Training Institute, Pendleton Juvenile Facility, Correctional Industrial Facility and Parole District 7.
As film rolled at the training center on the Pendleton Correctional Facility campus, the two-man production crew directed and shot a series of emergency scenarios with the help of actual Pendleton corrections officers.
Acting the part of a disgruntled inmate who’s taken a corrections officer as his hostage, Chris Spangler donned the yellow jumpsuit worn by offenders and used a prop knife to stab his hostage during the sequence. In another shot, Spangler used a prop knife that dripped blood to simulate slashing the hostage’s neck.
The hostage, Lt. Mike Pfleeger, begged the responding CERT, Correctional Emergency Response Team, members to shoot the offender. “I have kids,” he shouted as the knife was placed to his throat.
The camera captured all the drama from a first-person perspective designed to create a life-like scenario for corrections officers in training.
The question posed to trainees was simple: shoot or don’t shoot?
Several scenarios were played out for circumstances in which deadly force was not necessary, and others ended with a hostage dying if the proper action was not taken by the trainee.
Dave Young, the president and founder of CAPS, said the program was more evolved than previous training scenario tools available to law enforcement and corrections officers.
“It isn’t really virtual reality,” Young said. “We’re making it as close to real as possible. The other systems are pretend.”
Once the footage is packaged into an interactive training program, it is projected onto a white, paper screen to appear as large and life-like as possible.
Standing before the screen with a firearm, a trainee is actually able to shoot bullets at offenders in the film as events unfold before him.
In a classroom setting, the ammunition used is a nonlethal type of marker bullet that pierces the paper surface but is stopped by a curtain of fabric behind it.
Instructors can then rewind the video to the point of the shot and show trainees where their shots landed. “The purpose of this is to teach, and to measure the shooter’s ability,” IDOC Communications Officer Douglas Garrison said during the filming.
To make the situation more realistic, the portable scenario program can be moved to an outdoor firing range, like the one being built at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, and corrections officers can fire their own service weapons at the screen, allowing them to react as they would in a real-life situation.
In the past, training scenarios used lasers to show the path of a bullet fired by officers, but Young said the training does not translate as well into real life scenarios.
According to Major Mike Bennett, the training is vital. Bennett said two corrections officers have been killed by inmates in the last two months in the U.S.
Pendleton had its own emergency hostage situation in 1991. The hostage, a corrections officer, survived the incident, but the offender was killed.
“It’s happening everywhere,” he said. “The trick is to be trained for it.”
During Wednesday’s film shoot, CERT team members, dressed in full gear reminiscent of SWAT team attire, stormed the room where the hostage situation was unfolding.
As they made entry, a cylindrical metal canister was tossed into the room by one CERT member to simulate a flash bang. According to Garrison, flash bang explosions cause a loud noise and a flash of bright light, temporarily blinding and disabling the senses of the offender.
To imitate the sound of the explosion, blank bullets were fired into a blue metal barrel off-camera. The shots were fired by an actual Pendleton corrections officer, who watched as the directors arm rose and fall the give the cue to discharge his weapon.
The two mobile training units purchased by IDOC will circulate throughout the Indiana prison system, allowing all trainees to use the exact scenarios filmed in Pendleton and New Castle this week. The scenarios range from hostage situations, prisoner transport emergencies and escape attempts to funeral escorts gone awry.
Garrison said IDOC hopes to shoot 150 scenarios over 5 days using its own staff members. The finished product will be available in 6 to 8 weeks, Young said.
In the last two years, 11 corrections officers in the U.S. were killed by inmates.
The latest death occurred on June 25, 2008, when Donna Fitzgerald, a guard at the Tomoka Correctional Institution in West Virginia, was stabbed to death by an inmate. The inmate attacked Fitzgerald with a piece of folded metal.
Source: Correctional Peace Officers Foundation
Copyright 2008 The Herald Bulletin