Virtual Reality Training Prototype for Police-Bystander Conflict

The increasing complexity and frequency of societal conflicts pose significant challenges to public safety and demand innovative human-centric policing strategies and solutions. This research presents the development and evaluation of a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype for training Police Officers (POs) to addressing police-offender-bystander conflicts by applying proper conflict de-escalation techniques. The prototype is successfully evaluated by POs considering three scenarios: regular arrest, pandemic rule enforcement, and protest intervention. The results demonstrate the potential of VR solutions to augment traditional training methods by equipping POs with realistic and adaptive strategies to tackle conflict and through this assuring public safety and trust.