First Canadian agency to deploy Axon’s empathy-based training program.
TORONTO — Axon, the global leader in connected public safety technologies, and its subsidiary Axon Public Safety Canada Inc., today announced the Halton Regional Police Service (HRPS) as the first law enforcement agency in Canada to partner with Axon for its virtual reality (VR) empathy training program through Axon Academy, a network of online and in-person training for law enforcement. HRPS has received 20 Oculus Go headsets to begin training their internal teams and will officially launch their program in the first quarter of 2020.
HRPS is deploying Axon’s VR empathy-based training in an effort to increase community safety following an increasing number of mental health calls seen in the region. The program provides officers with an immersive training experience where trainees can put themselves in the shoes of both the officer responding to the scene and the person in crisis. With this deployment, HRPS will have access to three different VR training scenarios that Axon currently offers: autism, schizophrenia and suicide empathy training. The agency will also gain access to future training scenarios as they are developed.
“Axon’s innovative empathy-based training will complement our existing training program and further enable our frontline officers to manage and de-escalate potentially high-stakes interactions,” says Deputy Chief Roger Wilkie, the Halton Regional Police Service. “This partnership with Axon will ultimately serve to bolster community safety and well-being.”
Axon’s empathy development training is currently available to law enforcement agencies in the US and Canada. For more information on the program or to contact the team, please visit www.axon.com/training.
About Axon
Axon is a global network of devices, apps, training and people that helps public safety personnel become smarter and safer. With a mission of protecting life, our technologies give customers the confidence, focus and time they need to protect their communities. Our products impact every aspect of a public safety officer’s day-to-day experience.
We work hard for those who put themselves in harm’s way for all of us. To date, there are more than 428,600 software seats booked on the Axon network around the world and more than 224,000 lives have been saved with the Axon network of devices, apps, training and people. Learn more at https://ca.axon.com/.