L.A. Police Department's Hydra System Promotes Training for Command-Level Officers

[Photo: Officer Erin Gabaldon operates the communicator station during a Hydra simulation; she can see and hear what the Incident Management Teams are doing in the syndicate rooms. Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department.]

This is part two of a four-part series that looks at how different simulation systems are used to educate and train some of the nation’s emergency managers and first responders.

• Part one: Simulation-Based Training Provides Cost-Effectiveness, Flexibility. A virtual replica of New York City provides its Office of Emergency Management with a unique way to test its command element.
• Part three: HAZMAT Software Trains Responders on Instruments, Risk Assessments, Responses.Dartmouth College’s Interactive Media Laboratory developed Ops-Plus for WMD Hazmat following 9/11 to help first responders in terrorism response.

Hydra Goes Stateside

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) deployed the first Hydra simulation system — named after the seven-headed beast from Greek lore — in the United States to promote critical incident training for command-level officers. The department’s former chief, Bill Bratton, visited New Scotland Yard in London, participated in a Hydra exercise and became enamored with the system, said Sgt. Timothy Kalkus, the LAPD’s officer in charge of Hydra Operations. Three and a half years later, the LAPD’s Hydra center went live in March.

Hydra is an immersive simulation training system that uses video feeds to monitor real-time decision-making during critical incidents. During simulations, trainees are divided into groups and each group is in a different room that’s monitored via closed-circuit television and boundary microphones. The rooms are outfitted with the equipment the participants would need in a real-life event.

The LAPD’s setup consists of six rooms: a control room that runs the events and houses the communications and subject-matter expert stations; a plenary room that acts as the debriefing center; three syndicate rooms that are the breakout centers and contain a Hydra computer, conference table and whiteboards; and a role-play room.

Officials control the exercise and feed information to the trainees that can consist of newscasts, intelligence briefings, and police and fire radio traffic. “It’s all very immersive, and they get all this intelligence thrown at them and then we will send them a task to work on,” Kalkus said. “For example, we could send in something basic like to do a risk analysis of five events that are going to occur in the city over the next week and where we should put resources, to something more sophisticated like, ‘This is an unfolding event right now. We want you to write an operational order that covers all the planning aspects from intelligence to logistics to resources to funding.’”

The LAPD hopes to fill a training gap for command-level officers because, Kalkus said, once a police officer makes the rank of captain, his or her training usually gets curtailed due to increased duties and responsibilities. Hydra can be used for operational and investigative training, and exercises can be designed to cover natural disasters, counterterrorism and large-scale investigations.

Although L.A. is the first U.S. city to house a Hydra system, 60 centers operate in Europe and Canada, and Australia and Ireland each have one, according to Jonathan Crego, the system’s designer and the director of Hydra Operations for London’s Metropolitan Police Service. He thinks it’s been slow to spread to the U.S. because it’s difficult to describe and takes time, space and training. “The methodology of Hydra is while there’s lots of technology to make it happen, it’s all about the interaction of the people who are actually making decisions,” Crego said.

The LAPD’s system cost about $500,000, which included hardware, infrastructure improvements, software and a $1 licensing fee. Crego said he sold L.A. the licensing fee for $1 because of the current credit crunch and to force it into a research collaboration with all of the centers. The department’s Hydra center links to all of the others, which makes it possible to conduct multicenter exercises. “I truly believe it’s going to be a sea change for command staff training in the U.S. law enforcement community,” Kalkus said, “and you’ll see it develop over the next five to 10 years where you’re going to have the LAPD, [New York Police Department] and Chicago PD, all the major police departments, are going to have Hydra suites and we can connect them together and run a national exercise.”