By Kelci McKendrick
Enid News & Eagle, Okla.
ENID, Okla. — Officer Jordan O’Reilly on Tuesday afternoon felt a jolt of electricity run through one of his arms, immobilizing it.
O’Reilly, along with a few other Enid Police Department members, underwent a training that uses electrical muscle stimulation to completely disable a limb using isolated electrical circuits and simulate being injured through the Accuracy Under Fire (AUFIRE) training tool.
AUFIRE, according to its website, completely incapacitates or locks down specific parts of trainees’ bodies, such as their inner or outer forearms and biceps, and prepares them for the mental challenges associated with being wounded — forcing them to adapt, problem-solve, refocus and overcome to effectively neutralize the threat.
EPD was able to borrow the AUFIRE system, allowing officers to slip on the device’s harness and sleeves to learn, in a safe environment, how to respond to and keep fighting after being injured while out in the field.
“All your muscles start to lock up, ... and you really can’t move anything,” O’Reilly said of how it feels using the AUFIRE system. “So, you have to think about what you’re going to do, and then you have to do it.”
EPD Capt. Warren Wilson wrote an article about AUFIRE for Police1 in December 2022 , detailing how AUFIRE was created and its benefits.
In 2006, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Kristina Ripatti was shot and paralyzed while on duty. Her husband Tim Pearce , a fellow LAPD officer, later had an epiphany while helping with Ripatti’s physical therapy, which included a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation unit that fought atrophy through electrical muscular impulses.
“It occurred to Pearce the same technology could be used to safely simulate a gunshot wound in a training environment,” Wilson wrote. “Thus, injury simulation technology was born.”
There are basic safety guidelines to follow while using AUFIRE, though it doesn’t cause pain — only using 66 volts of electricity compared with a TASER’s 50,000 volts of electricity, Wilson wrote.
On Tuesday, Wilson said AUFIRE adds another element to law enforcement training.
“If you look at the increase in ambushes where officers get shot — we see videos all the time of officers getting shot and just giving up,” Wilson said. “They need to understand that they can’t ever give up. That’s one thing we hammer into officers from the start, but (AUFIRE) shows them that they can fight through.”
EPD has no plans on purchasing an AUFIRE system anytime soon, Wilson said, but he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to borrow it.
“Anything we can do to build the confidence in our officers and get them to understand that they can overcome anything out on the streets, and they have to win,” Wilson said. “Confident cops make less escalating mistakes.”
Wilson said members of law enforcement are trained to shoot and to be shot at and learn what actions to take to help treat injuries, but, although officers undergo training that simulates being shot, such as through non-lethal simulated ammunition or being told to not use one arm during training, that doesn’t ensure their preparedness for the experience of being immobilized like AUFIRE can.
“We don’t want officers to have novel experiences in the field — we want them to have novel experiences in training so they know what to do out in the field,” he said. "(AUFIRE) gives the extra function of your arm not being able to work, so you have to fight with your other arm or whatever that may be.”
After using the AUFIRE device a few times, O’Reilly said he felt more comfortable and like he could better expect how to respond to a situation where he’s wounded.
“This is next-level,” he said. “It adds that factor of, ‘Now you can’t use your arm. What are you going to do about it?’”
McKendrick is police and court reporter for the Enid News & Eagle .
Have a question about this story? Do you see something we missed? Do you have a story idea for Kelci? Send an email to kelcim@enidnews.com.
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