GLASGOW — Barren Circuit Court Clerk Krissie Coe Fields, acting as a court security officer, encountered during a simulated exercise Monday afternoon what would likely be her worst-case scenario at work, an active courtroom shooter.

Fields is one of about 70 Barren County residents who signed up to spend a half hour in a police officer’s shoes. 

The Glasgow Police Department this week opened to the community a computer-simulated, decision-based training program that police officers use to train for real life work. The idea is to have community members understand the situations officers face on a day-to-day basis.

Operating similarly to an electronic gaming system, a real life scenario is played out on a life-size screen in a darkened room in the basement of the 911 Center. Citizens playing the role of officers are dispatched to a call and given only a fraction of information. They have to decide during each scenario what to do; use a Taser, do nothing, fire a gun or use OC spray. The screen reacts to the user’s actions.

If a participant waits one second too long, a shooter may fire. When the screen turns white, the “officer” has been shot. Some scenarios last several minutes. Others occur in mere seconds, just like real life.

The participants have only seconds to make a life or death decision. 

The simulator is owned by the Kentucky League of Cities and travels to agencies all over the state. Officers train on it to prepare for the job. All of GPD’s officers have already completed the training for 2016. The department is using it this week to let the public experience police work.

“Most people don’t know how we do what we do from day to day,” Officer Steven Fields said. Fields, who is not related to the circuit court clerk, is a firearms instructor and a simulated firearms instructor for the department.

After each person completes a scenario Steven Fields gives that person a critique asking them why they did what they did and if their actions were justified. 

 “I’ve seen a lot of people shoot when there shouldn’t have been a shot taken or (they) shoot innocents,” he said of working with members of the public who are participating in the program. “The more people we can put through this, the better understanding they have of what we do.”

Glasgow Councilman Joe Trigg, a U.S. Air Force veteran of several wars, made mostly head shots during his turn at playing officer. He was reluctant to shoot women involved in the scenarios, a conditioning he said is common in the United States but not in other countries where he’s seen combat.

“That’s the nature of war, it’s hard for a man to shoot a woman and kids,” Trigg said.

Trigg said he’s always had a high respect for officers and knows that the work they do is risky. The training exercise reinforced what he already believes. Police start out at a disadvantage because they don’t know exactly what they are walking into but the person on the other end has that knowledge, he said.

“It’s a hazardous job,” he said. “They have to make (decisions) at the spur of the moment. You can only hope that their training and God make them make the right decisions.”

Melissa Lafferty, a county clerk employee and the wife of Barren River Drug Task Force Director Ron Lafferty, said the experience left her a little more fearful of what her husband faces at work.

While she had fun with the exercise, the lens through which she sees the world colored her reactions. In one active shooter scenario a man came out of a door armed and wearing a ballistic vest. She held back on shooting the man because she saw the vest and thought he might be a law enforcement officer until he aimed his gun and fired at her. 

“I learned that it is not easy to make split-second decisions as a police officer,” she said. “I actually could see what happens here. I can hear the stories and Ron can tell me, but you really don’t know.”

— Follow Assistant City Editor Deborah Highland on Twitter @BGDNCrimebeat or visit bgdailynews.com.