Nassau police training village is a worthwhile tool

How do you prepare for a possible shootout? The new and more complex world faced by police today was illustrated recently with the agonizing decision making surrounding the arrest of alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann.

Police became aware that Heuermann had armed himself with an arsenal kept inside his house. More than 200 guns were eventually found, only half licensed legally. So Suffolk County authorities decided to arrest him outside his Manhattan office rather than risk a possible shootout in his Massapequa Park neighborhood.

“We wanted to take him into custody somewhere outside the house, because of access to those weapons,” Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney explained, successfully avoiding any incident during Heuermann’s arrest.

It’s only a small example of the increasingly complicated choices and greater responsibilities faced by police in recent years that require more and better training. The sharp rise in gun ownership is only part of the challenges facing police. The lasting lessons from the police brutality murder of George Floyd in Minnesota also underlined new societal demands on law enforcement for more accountability, less confrontation, and greater sensitivity in dealing with arrests, particularly those involving Blacks and other minorities.

Given this new world of challenges, a planned high-tech police “training village” in Nassau with a “movable movie set” — physically simulating various crises in schools, banks, homes and houses of worship, including the threat of mass shootings in public spaces — seems a sensible way to train, educate and prepare for the difficult, and sometime life-threatening, choices that cops face on the street. This $11.7 million center will be particularly valuable to Nassau residents only if its costs, including overtime, are carefully monitored by officials, and if it leads to a better brand of humane public safety rather than a militarized force enchanted by the latest gadgets.

The new training facility, scheduled to break ground in September, will be located within the department’s $54 million academy and intelligence center that opened in 2021 at Nassau Community College in Uniondale. Police officials say the new center will emphasize “de-escalation” strategies by allowing officers to become familiar with crises they wouldn’t face ordinarily until they actually happened.

Critics say pouring money into training — $70 million in total — could be wasted without better oversight of police behavior by top officials. They point to a recent Newsday report that found more than $160 million has been paid out by Long Island taxpayers since 2000 because of misconduct lawsuits. That’s a valid point.

But high-tech police training, especially using cheaper virtual reality and other simulations, has demonstrable benefits. A study of 237 Dutch National police officers found that VR was an effective tool in preparing for real-life crises faced by law-enforcement. Sophisticated training is warranted and if it can be done without excessive spending, all the better.