PLAINFIELD, Ind. (WISH) — Police trainers on Wednesday said better training at a new facility will save the lives of both police officers and the people they interact with.

Gov. Eric Holcomb, Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter, and other dignitaries cut the ribbon on a new, $96 million scenario-based training facility at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy late Wednesday morning.

The facility includes a mobile home park, a test track, a virtual reality simulator room and rooms simulating a liquor store and a jail cell. The rooms include lifelike graphics and artwork to make them feel more like real locations.

Timothy Horty, executive director of the Indiana Law Enforcement Agency, or ILEA, said the goal is to ensure cadets’ training is as close to real life as possible.

“It puts pressure on them. It’s a way that we try to make certain that the way they train is the way they’ll perform out on the street,” he said. “And so what this amounts to is a better adult learning model for our young officers to be part of their training.”

Holcomb, Carter and others said the facility grew out of conversations surrounding how police do their jobs in the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Carter said the new facility will allow prospective police officers to train differently than previous generations did, with greater emphasis on repetition and learning by doing.

“Particularly over the course of the last 4 or 5 years, we’ve had some very difficult days. And quite frankly, I think we should have, it’s okay,” Carter said. “But this allowed us to change the way we think, to change the way we train, specifically associated with use of force, with deadly force and with driving, which is our number-one liability.”

Holcomb said education and training are paramount to officers’ wellbeing. He said the new facility is an example of supporting police through investment rather than through rhetoric.

Horty said scenario-based training is not new to ILEA but the level of realism will be much greater. Taking the liquor store room as an example, he said a trainee might walk up to the counter and face anything from a bad check to an active shooter.

“It’s an opportunity to recognize that just placing handcuffs on someone and arresting them maybe isn’t the right thing,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for them to deescalate the situation, to talk through it.”

Horty said more than 600 cadets from all over the state go through ILEA’s Plainfield campus each year.