AUBURN — The TV cops make it look so easy — clearing cluttered rooms of bad guys while leaving good guys safe and intact.
If only it were so easy in the world outside of Hollywood.
At Central Maine Community College Thursday, more than five dozen people — civilians, mostly — got to experience the gut-churning stress of an active-shooter scenario.
Not everyone performed with the skill and heroics of a big-screen pro.
“We’ve had a lot of people killed with their hands up today,” said David King, an instructor in the school’s Criminal Justice Program.
Not real-world killed, of course. The experience was made possible with the help of new technology called the StressVest, a system designed to make scenarios seem as real as possible, for both good guy and bad.
It worked like this: roughly a dozen criminal justice students put on StressVests and grabbed some of the faux guns, which include both pistols and fully automatic rifles. They crouched and crept in dark corners of a large room, some armed, some not. It was up to the subject assigned to clear the room to decide which of these people were good guys — and which were out to kill.
Shoot too soon, and you might kill an innocent civilian. Wait too long, and you’re toast.
“We’re demonstrating the kind of split-second decisions the officers have to make while under stress,” said Matt Tifft, chairman of the Criminal Justice Department.
“We’re not teaching how to shoot,” King said. “We’re teaching when to shoot. It’s not as easy as it looks on TV.”
The StressVest kit include waist-worn packs that record hits with either a vibration or a small electrical shock to stimulate some of the pain of getting shot. Hits are recorded when a beam from the gun strikes the vest.
The person assigned to move through the “shoot house,” faux gun in hand, doesn’t have to worry about any of the gadgetry, though. He or she has to worry about everything else.
In the simulation, the volunteer moves from room to room, checking behind furniture, doors and a parked police car in order to root out villains while sparing civilians. He or she does so under the thud of gunfire and while various screams and murmurs arise from dark corners of the room.
It’s stressful. It’s meant to be. And on Thursday, roughly 60 people from across the college campus volunteered to give it a go.
“It just took off,” Tifft said. “A lot of people wanted to put themselves in the front-row seat.”
According to Tifft, the active-shooter event served several purposes:
• it was education for criminal justice students and an eye-opener for others;
• it served as a test of the new StressVest equipment, received by the school just three weeks ago; and
• it helped raise money for CMCC graduate Jeremy Bolduc, who was recently diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a form of cancer.
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