Warrior, Kimberly and Morris police officers will have the chance to train with state-of-the-art technology this week.

A Firearms Tactical Situation (FATS) police training program is currently set up at Warrior City Hall.

FATS trainees are given a realistic electronic handgun with a laser installed into the barrel. One of nearly 600 live-action, full motion video scenarios plays on a large screen in front of the trainee; each scenario is an exercise that tasks trainees with deciding when and if to use their firearm.

“It helps build a better way to stay alive. You can be dead in this job real quick,” said Steve Keitges, a Firearms Instructor and Range Master for the Warrior Police Department. Keitges has been training officers for 13 years.

Each scenario is filmed from the trainee’s perspective. As the trainee pulls the gun’s trigger, a chamber of compressed air in the gun fires and makes the gun kick, simulating a real firearm’s recoil. The computer programming also tracks hits and misses, whether any innocents were hit, and lethal and non-lethal shots.

“We try to do a lot of live-fire training with paper targets. But the paper targets aren’t as good because there’s no decision,” said Keitges.

Scenarios rarely play through the same way twice.

For instance, one scenario begins with responding to a domestic violence call. The scenario portrays the FATS trainee and another officer entering a home with a hysterical family pointing to a back room. Inside the room, a large man is attacking a woman on a bed.

Sometimes the other officer will strike the man with her billy club, only to be shoved away by the man, who continues to attack the woman. The scenario can also take another path in which the assisting officer sprays pepper spray in the attacker’s face, after which he wrests the officer’s gun from her holster and opens fire on the FATS trainee. Unless the trainee acts quickly and returns fire, he or she will fail the scenario.

“It’s something we have to deal with every day. We carry something that can take somebody’s life. It’s not an easy choice to make,” said Keitges. He said FATS shows officers how little time they have to make tough decisions.

The city of Warrior’s insurance company owns the FATS equipment, and loans it out occasionally for other cities’ law enforcement to train with.  Vestavia Hills and Jefferson State Community College police will also be training with the FATS program.