Cops Trade Guns for Game Pads

It sounds like a screwy idea at first - a gaggle of officers from the Las Vegas Police Department trotting off to the GameWorks video game palace for "team building" exercises.

The first thoughts that crossed my mind were, "So tax dollars are going to pay for cops to play games like House of the Dead or Indy 500 Racing?" and "Do they serve donuts at GameWorks?"

But then I was reminded the Marines have been using a version of Doom to train some of its troops for two years now. And then I found out that the officers will be undergoing exercises like playing the game Top Skater with their eyes closed - one of their fellow officers has to figure out a way to navigate them through the virtual speed-skating course. Maybe that's no ropes course exercise, but I see how that could facilitate trust.

GameWorks has established a team-building program, one it says sports "all the fundamentals of more traditional plans - developing clearly defined goals, making decisions as a team, and communicating effectively in many different circumstances." It has banded exercises like the blinded Top Skater one into modules with titles like "Team Strategies for Managing Change."

And, for the 20 officers of the Las Vegas department who headed to GameWorks today for their three-plus-hour video workout, it's probably a cost-effective way of conducting one of these team-building exercises.

Even if that team-building aspect is a little specious, GameWorks will at least allow the 20 cops attending today's exercise to blow off some steam. And that's gotta be worth something....