By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati Police robbery specialists John Rose and Andy Nogueira act as suspects in a training scenario in the department's new low-light training building in Evendale. (Jeff Swinger photo) | ZOOM |

It doesn't look like much, the cement-block building in the middle of a field in Evendale. It's empty except for a single light hanging in one corner and a bunch of spent shell casings on the floor.

This is the Cincinnati Police Department's newest training tool - a place officers can practice responding to scenarios in very low light, even no light at all. They use their own guns, modified to fire projectiles made of colored soap. That lets the officers see where they hit the pretend bad guys.

Before the department built the $70,000 building, officers had pushed for the building, arguing that low-light can add danger to any incident and that many officers work only at night.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which conducted a yearlong investigation after the April 2001 fatal shooting of Timothy Thomas by Officer Stephen Roach and the riots that followed, agreed. Federal officials urged the department to do more low-light training.

"It's rare that you'd have a no-light situation in the city,'' said Lt. Doug Ventre, the department's firearms training supervisor. "But officers face limited light a lot. We felt this training needed to be more realistic.''

The first to use the new training house last week were members of the Robbery Task Force. District 2 Officer Evan Evans remembers being on the task force in the early 1980s, when he said officers mostly spent hours doing surveillance outside stores and dressed up as bums downtown to try to attract would-be robbers. Back then, the task force worked about a dozen cases, he said.

Now, robberies continue to rise across the city. Officer Evans, for example, has 19 cases himself. And other members of the task force, many of them already part of the five Violent Crime Squads, have dozens as well. And they've become more dangerous, officers say, because they're often at gunpoint and related to drugs.

At the start of the training sessions last week, Chief Tom Streicher addressed the group. He gave them a simple mission: "Catch the bad guys.''

But he also reminded them - key for cops in this post-Justice investigation time in Cincinnati - that he will defend them if they use force and it was necessary to do so.

"We know robbers don't just do robberies anymore,'' he said. "We know they do it to get drugs. They do it with weapons. So make a dent. Make a difference out there.''

ROBBERY TASK FORCE

The Cincinnati Police Department's annual Robbery Task Force hit the streets Friday. Officers will stay in neighborhoods, not centralized into one unit as in years past. They will continue working on drugs and other street crimes because many robberies are motivated by drugs. It involves about 35 officers from the five Violent Crime Squads, plus up to a total of 100 with help from investigators, Street Corner drug officers and others; Mission from Chief Tom Streicher: Be role models for younger officers; use force if necessary; and, "Catch the bad guys.''

So training evolved as well, and not just to emphasize how to respond when you can't see well. Lt. Ventre went straight for the most realistic scenario the department has: the deaths five years ago this week of Officer Daniel Pope and Spec. Ron Jeter.

They were Robbery Task Force members shot to death Dec. 6, 1997, while trying to serve a warrant. They did not radio communications to identify their location. So when they were shot, no one knew where they were.

So Lt. Ventre incorporated into the low-light scenario repeated reminders for the officers to notify communications dispatchers of their whereabouts. Some did not; they were reminded again.

In pairs, they suited up in masks and clothing to protect themselves from the soap bullets. They were told they were approaching two men who matched the descriptions of two suspects in an earlier robbery. From there, the scenarios differed depending upon how the officers reacted, but in each, at least one of the acting suspects went for his gun.

"It was very realistic because you had to worry about hitting your background and think about innocent people around you,'' said Officer Steve Lawson, who also works in District 2. "That's about as real as I think you could get as far as things going badly really quickly.''

Lt. Ventre will be working on a schedule to get all 1,020 officers through the simulation building.

The Robbery Task Force continues into early January.