CBS12 News Team

PBSO 'shoot, don't shoot' training prepares deputies for threatening situations

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. -- The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has 2,400 deputies. Each year, they have to go through 40 hours of training and that includes "shoot-don't shoot" simulations.

When a deputy comes face-to-face with an armed person, it can be a life and death situation. The sheriff's office tries to make sure deputies are prepared for that, long before it happens. When a deputy has to deal with a guy who may have a gun, the deputy better know what to do.

That's why they come to a simulator room where a scenario plays out on a video screen and a deputy holding a gun must decide to shoot or not shoot. This kind of training goes on all year, but it takes on added significance now that the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has had 7 officer-involved shootings this year, 4 of them fatal.

Every officer in the department gets this training each year.

Cpl. Ray Ruby, PBSO: The biggest thing we show them is how to use the level of force that is necessary and reasonable. And then teach them how to identify how to make those decisions very quickly.

One instructor says a situation can change from peaceful to threatening in a hurry.

Cpl. Ray Ruby, PBSO: Experts in the field say that roughly an individual has 1.25 seconds to make a decision in a basic, what we call, shootout.

So how does a deputy know if he needs to use deadly force? One expert sums it up this way.

Cpl. Ray Ruby, PBSO: It's when the actions or in-actions of the suspect make the officer reasonably believe that they have no other choice. We don't teach people how to kill. We teach deputies how not to become fatalities themselves.

One instructor says deputies are taught that when they do fire a gun, they don't shoot a suspect's tires out or fire a warning shot first. They shoot to stop the threat, and usually that means they shoot for the largest body mass available, such as the person's chest or torso. Because the larger the target, the greater chance they have of hitting the target and stopping the threat.

Thursday, June 7 2012, 11:42 PM EDT

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