Morehouse College Partners with Google for Anti-Bias Officer Training

Morehouse College’s National Training Institute on Race and Equity and its Culturally Relevant Computer Lab have partnered with Google’s Jigsaw to create a virtual reality (VR) training program for police in de-escalation training. The program, called Trainer, puts officers into VR scenarios that teach de-escalation techniques through advancing communication and critical thinking skills.

Trainer is a VR platform for adaptive scenario-based training. It combines voice recognition, natural language processing, and VR to create an immersive, realistic environment for law enforcement instructors to train and evaluate officer performance in de-escalation and communication skills.

“This technology, in combination with strong anti-bias training, has the potential to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in policing,” Dr. Bryant Marks, associate professor at Morehouse College and founder and principal trainer at the National Training Institute on Race and Equity, tells theGrio.

The school will study Trainer’s effect on officers’ empathy toward Black Americans and will utilize the technology to strengthen anti-bias law enforcement training. Students will participate as research assistants and training co-facilitators.

In addition to Morehouse College, Google’s Jigsaw has partnered with the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Police Research and Policy, the University of Maryland's Lab for Applied Social Science Research, and Georgetown Law on the project.