Police stepping into world of VR

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This article was published 06/04/2023 (1207 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Brandon Police Service is dipping into the world of virtual reality through a new partnership with an Alberta college that aims to explore ethical decision-making in law enforcement.

The three-year research project from Lethbridge College will work with five police services across Western Canada, including BPS, to develop a virtual reality tool that assists law enforcement in measuring potential officers’ ability to make ethical decisions.

“I think this gives us a chance to give scenarios that Brandon may face and learn scenarios that other agencies may face so that we can combine this learning. And that’s all part of the research, finding the best path forward,” Brandon police Chief Wayne Balcaen told the Sun.

“It’s certainly a win-win all around for both Lethbridge College as well as the police agencies that are going to be involved.”

Currently, the hiring process for potential officers at BPS involves a video test on ethical decision-making. But a possible VR tool developed from the research would enhance the police service’s hiring process, said Balcaen, an alumnus of Lethbridge College.

“There’s been a lot more oversight in policing and a lot more expectations from our members. I think that’s another step where we can work with the provider and our applicants and produce recruits that have gone through this ethical decision-making as part of their application process.”

The research project aims to assess how well VR could be used in place of traditional videos or interviews to measure a potential officer’s ability to make ethical decisions in a variety of scenarios.

“Virtual reality can make people feel a sense of presence, where they actually feel like they’re in a scenario. It’s so immersive, if designed the right way,” said Kirsten Fantazir, a president’s applied research chair in public safety at Lethbridge College.

Virtual reality would allow police recruits to be tested in a real-time scenario, providing services with a more authentic way of measuring applicant’s abilities.

“That is such a more forward way of looking at somebody’s abilities than sitting down in an interview and asking a traditional question where people usually have canned responses and ways that they’d like to appear to the interviewers,” she said.

The program, which also involves police services in Alberta and British Columbia, will begin in May and follow a multi-step methodology. First, scenarios will be gathered from the partnering police services. Researchers will then develop these scenarios as a virtual reality program and send them to participants to test out and give feedback. The feedback will be sent back to the project organizers, who will then compare the results to see how well VR holds up against the traditional tools currently used in police-hiring processes.

VR technology can help reduce subjectivity that is present in traditional hiring methods because it provides a more realistic assessment as the program can be designed to include a variety of different paths that the user can go through, Fantazir explained.

The VR tool won’t replace all traditional hiring practices. Rather, it can be used as another piece of information to aid in police services’ process of determining the suitability of an applicant, she added.

The project also has far-reaching implications if it helps to produce officers with strong ethical decision-making abilities.

“If we have people that are making those ethical decisions, not only do the public have more trust in the entire system, but you have people like victims and other individuals who feel more comfortable coming forward,” Fantazir said.

“Brandon is actually very well known for being a community policing organization, where they really do rely on the community to be supportive and assist with the work that they do.”

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com