When it comes to officer safety on roads, law enforcement agencies must become proactive by turning their focus on training and policies that will help alleviate issues experienced in high-stress situations. Driving simulators, EVOC programs, and incident reviews can assist in keeping officers and the public safe while getting the entire department to buy in.
Lt. James Preston of the Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct 5 in Texas—a 2021 Destination Zero Officer Traffic Safety Award Winner— spoke about the importance of having a program in place at the Destination Zero Conference.
Starting a program
When the agency began looking at developing a program, its leaders, including Constable Ted Heap, took a measured approach in order to get deputies on board. “When we started looking at some of the issues were having of deputies being involved in crashes and injured working around vehicles, we took a data-driven approach,” says Preston. “It wasn’t just people’s opinions or what we wanted to do. We started looking at stats and numbers and reviewing a lot of what was going on with the boots on the ground.”
Some of the issues identified were that nationally, many officers were being injured or killed while working around vehicles; the agency’s deputies drove tens of thousands of miles each year; they were receiving minimal driver training; and were under a lot of stress. The agency looked at low-stress and high-stress events to try to improve the outcome and reduce line-of-duty crashes.
As the agency pored through the data, certain things stood out. A majority of the agency’s at-fault crashes were from deputies in their first three years on the job. Many of the line-of-duty crashes occurred under emergency driving conditions, at intersections and while the deputy was under stress, according to Preston. “We wanted to address every single one of these issues and see what tools we could give them to better perform while they are out there.”
Another reason why officer traffic safety was such an important issue to the Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct 5 is because two of the agency’s three line-of-duty deaths—Capt. Jerry Foster and Deputy Jason Norling—occurred after the deputies were struck by passing vehicles. “A lot of what we’ve done here is in honor of their service and their sacrifice,” says Preston.
Driver training
As the agency analyzed the data, it found several issues. One of the main areas was training. When officers join the agency, they get 40 hours of behind-the-wheel driver training in the academy, along with the driving they’ve done in their civilian lives. “It may not prepare them for the rigors of law enforcement and the type of responses they are going to have to do with everything going on in the car,” says Preston. “Listening to the radio, responding to a high-stress event, and then having to make decisions on top of that.”
The agency developed a driving simulator program and a three-day EVOC program. The agency also revamped how its deputies were approaching high-risk vehicle stops.
In 2019, the Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct 5 purchased a L3Harris driving simulator housed in a 24-foot trailer. “When we started focusing on how people were being trained, we focused primarily on decision making behind the wheel. The driving simulator program was a great thing for that,” says Preston. “The nice thing about the driving simulator program is that we can target focus on what the individual issues are that a deputy may be having while operating a motor vehicle.”
The agency could build intersection drills and work with deputies on decision-making scenarios such as whether to pursue a vehicle through an intersection for a minor traffic violation or to pursue a vehicle through a school zone.
“What we found is a lot of times, deputies coming to that sudden onset stress get tunnel vision and they don’t recognize how far off they are getting with some of these things,” says Preston. “The driving simulator allows us to get them a lot of repetitions and a lot of experience and target focus on the decision making. They learn how to manage their stress so that they can better deal with their decision-making.”
An added bonus of driver simulators is that it eliminates the risk of an officer being injured or a vehicle being damaged during training. Full EVOC programs can be cost-prohibitive for many law enforcement agencies because they have to be able to provide enough vehicles for the training as well as driving facility that’s large enough to accommodate it. “The nice thing about having a driver simulator housed in a trailer is if we have to take this mobile and go to a substation if we want to help other organizations out or other departments, we can take this thing to different locations and help them out with their driver training,” says Preston. “We’ve had a lot of good feedback from our organization and from other organizations that have come over and joined in our program. We offer this training to all agencies around us for free. We try to accommodate everybody the best that we can.”
While a simulator won’t give officers the full effect of being behind the wheel of a vehicle, if the agency sees an event that happens, it can recreate the exact roadway, weather conditions and time of day so that the officer can drive through the same environment.
Accountability
When the Harris County Constable’s Office Precinct 5 looked at policy updates, it implemented a review process. “We would sporadically look at videos to see where people were at and give that first line supervision. We wanted to hold ourselves accountable. The public expects reasonable decisions and actions on the part of our deputies out there and we want to make sure that we were training them to that and holding ourselves to that standard.”
The agency also implemented a process of conducting workshops and critical incident debriefs. “The debrief was a good opportunity for our folks to come in and review what it is we were teaching them and what they did on a specific event and give them the opportunity to take ownership of their actions and decisions and explain to us,” says Preston. “Not with a focus of people facing disciplinary action afterwards. When you take that off the table, it really clears the air for folks. That way they can open-up about things and hopefully give you a better honest answer because the goal here is enhancing future performance out of our people. It kind of helped get around the attitudes and egos that we face sometimes in law enforcement and got folks to give an honest answer and ownership.”
The success of the officer traffic safety program could be seen in the numbers. The program was implemented in 2019 into 2020. From 2018 to 2020, at-fault fleet costs went down 50.38%, non-fault fleet costs went down 49.45% and at-fault line-of-duty crashes went down 94%.
“That was a huge success for us,” he says. “We continue to keep working these programs because we keep getting folks coming into the organization and we want to continue to support them and keep training them and hopefully we continue this trend with our numbers.”
