Blue Sheepdog

Police departments are frequently faced with budget cuts. Our citizens expect more, while our city commissions give less. An unfortunate truth is that most agencies will slash the training budget before making cuts in other areas.

With an underfunded training program, instructors have to decide what classes they will be able to provide. Some training is mandated by state or federal law.

After September 11, 2001, training in the Incident Command System (ICS) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) became mandatory for a lot of people. All federal, state, local, tribal, and private sector persons with a direct role in emergency management and response must now be ICS and NIMS trained. This includes police officers, deputy sheriff’s, and their agencies.

Designed to simulate real-world scenarios, Incident Commander trains police officers and other emergency responders how to use the National Incident Management System to respond to and handle emergencies.

Incident Commander may look like a game, but it is a full-fledged simulation. Time delays, resource limitations, and evolving crises are all part of the training. There is no cheating and poor decisions will quickly become apparent.

The system requirements are pretty light:

Windows 98, Me, XP, or 2000
400 Mhz Pentium II
128 Mb RAM
4x CD-ROM
sound card
Internet connection (if playing online)

Incident Commander can be used solo, or run in a group simulation with several different people representing the different agencies that respond to any given emergency. Diverse emergencies such as chemical spills and school hostage situations are included. There is even a map editor to let you match your community’s actual streets to the simulation.

The program networks easily with multiple other computers allowing multiple people to interact at once. Consider having several computers in different rooms. A representative from each agency is at a different computer: fire department, police department, ambulance services, etc. Each is viewing the same scene on their computer, but they have to coordinate their efforts using their radios, runners, phones, or however they might normally communicate in a scenario. Suddenly a pretty good simulator can teach valuable lessons in communication and coordination.

The program is available for FREE to police departments and other public safety agencies. A shipping and handling fee of $5.00 will deliver up to 16 CDs to your department. Free is an awfully attractive price for training in an area mandated by federal law.

Visit the official web site and learn more.