Epilogue 6 113 Implementation of VR Training into Police Practice The implementation of VR training into police practice refers to the integration of VR as a training technology into existing training curricula and structures of the police agency. To implement VR training as an effective training tool, police agencies have to carefully examine the content, frequency, and duration of training as specified in their training curricula. In addition, police agencies need to consider the current organizational context including the resources that can be devoted to VR training (e.g., personnel to run the VR system, education of instructors, available training time). Most importantly, the advantages that VR training offers (e.g., simulation of a variety of locations, props, and individuals; for more see Giessing, 2021) need to provide a clear benefit to currently implemented real-life training practices. To this end, Chapters 2 and 3 provide guidance for the implementation of VR into police training. In Chapter 2, we show that European law enforcement agencies employ enthusiastic police instructors with diverse expertise and provide training with community-relevant content-specific foci. However, challenges of training are apparent on the organizational and delivery level. First, the inherent hierarchical structure of law enforcement agencies provides hurdles and additional administrative effort when attempting to make changes to existing training structures. Particularly when aiming to implement VR into training practices, convincing relevant stakeholders of governmental organizations may provide a challenge. On the level of training delivery, police instructors struggle with the available resources to create realistic training environments. In reallife scenario-based training, instructors rely on available training locations, facilities, props, and actors to recreate realistic and stress-inducing training environments. Utilizing VR as a training tool allows police instructors to create training scenarios independent of training location, facilities, and props. VR training allows exposure to a variety of different scenarios and environments within the same training session. VR training may thus provide a solution to the commonly experienced challenge of limited variance in training environments in European police training. Chapter 3 investigates how police officers respond to VR scenario-based training and real-life scenario-based training. Based on training responses to real-life scenario-based training and VR scenario-based training, VR training seems to be a useful training tool for training objectives that require cognitive engagement and the experience of stress. Thus, training objectives that include decision-making and acting in stressful situations can be trained well using VR. Physical safety and the occurrence of cybersickness should also be considered when utilizing VR as a training tool; therefore, training objectives that require high levels of physical output and activity, such as chasing, apprehending, or physically performing arrest skills may not (yet) suitable for VR training. Chapter 3 also showed that VR experiences (i.e., engagement and negative effects)
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