Virtual reality machine gives police hallucinations !!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Des Moines Register
March 22, 2006 Author: Tom Alex
REGISTER STAFF WRITER



Des Moines Police Officer Paul Tieszen stepped onto a city bus and into a world he's only heard about.

"Things flash out of nowhere. Small voices saying, 'Go get your medication.' The bus driver is talking to you normally and all of a sudden he starts calling you 'Your Highness.' Then he becomes part of the hallucination," says Tieszen. "It's a whole busload of children, then it changes to a busload of adults. There's a nurse involved. You see normal things and then all of a sudden someone pulls up next to you and says, 'Get off the bus.' "

The bus wasn't real, but the officer's reactions were. And he quickly got a glimpse of what it's like to suffer from a severe mental illness.

Tieszen's window into the world of hallucinations was provided by a high-tech virtual reality mask that police use to better understand the mentally ill people they come in contact with.

"You are in the role of the individual on the bus," he said, trying to describe the experience. "You are seeing what is in the mind of someone who is like that."

The device is called a virtual hallucination machine. It was introduced to police by Teresa Bomhoff, president of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Greater Des Moines.

She said the mask was created by a Belgian pharmaceutical company to give mental health providers, police and the public an idea of what it's like to experience hallucinations.

"We want people to get a more empathetic understanding of what people with hallucinations are experiencing," she said.

The effort is more than an interesting experience. Confrontations with the mentally ill can turn deadly:

• June 7, 2005 — A Polk County sheriff's deputy shot and killed Jonathan McCourt, 47, outside the Polk County Courthouse after McCourt spray-painted his own pickup truck, shouted profanities and then pulled a toy gun from the waistband of his pants. McCourt's wife said he had not taken prescribed medication for a mental disorder.

• April 18, 2005 — A Des Moines police officer shot and killed Daniel Scott, 38, after paramedics were called to treat a suicidal man who had made cuts on his wrists. Officer Martin Seibert said Scott threatened to shoot and motioned as if he were going to fire a gun. Scott was unarmed.

• Feb. 17, 2005 — Ankeny police fatally shot Arman Zilic, 20, after they were asked to investigate reports of a suicidal man armed with a sawed-off shotgun.

Such cases are why Polk County taxpayers spend $300,000 each year to support the Eyerly-Ball Mobile Crisis Response Team, which is called upon to help defuse situations that involve unstable subjects, some of whom are armed when the first officer shows up.

The team gets about 140 calls per month — 198 in January.

"It can be hard for officers in the field to determine what's going on. That's why they call us," said Mary Elliott, a nurse who works with the crisis team. "And it's why something like this is helpful."

Officers lined up earlier this month and slipped on the mask for a trip on the city bus, or the other altered reality, the pharmacy.

At one point, the driver picks up a microphone and talks to a dispatcher.

When he finishes he says, "They like to keep track of me."

Then a small voice tells the wearer: "They want to keep track of you."

It was the first time Tieszen was able to see distorted reality from the other side of the badge.

"The neurons are firing images in random order. Like being awake but dreaming. Like a lot of jumbled thoughts," he said. "Like being trapped in a nightmare but you are awake."

Tieszen said he's had several real-life experiences with people who are hallucinating.

"A guy on the south side supposedly had a bomb in his car. He was paranoid schizophrenic. We checked out the car. He was seeing wires he had not seen before. He thought the CIA was planting it," Tieszen said. "He actually was seeing wires, but they were to the power seat of his vehicle. You could not convince him they belonged in his car."

Police Chief William McCarthy said the hallucination machine broadens any officer's experience.

"We have to deal with behavior. But any time we can have a better understanding of human nature, it strengthens our capabilities," he said.

[nyima]

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