The officers are actually Dubai Police trainees playing "serious games" that digitally rebuild real crime and accident scenes from the city onto a computer screen.
Be it a celebrity murder, jewellery shop robbery or a massive car crash, the police force's virtual training and crime scene reconstruction sections put cadets in the middle of the action. The games use actual case file details like photographs, security camera footage, documents - plus three-dimensional scans of rooms or streets - to create life-like virtual worlds where cadets can "walk around" and uncover evidence.
At the scene
"You cannot always place trainees at the scene because of safety issues, environmental concerns or security reasons," said Major Dr Ahmad Bin Subaih, Head of Virtual Training Section at Dubai Police General Headquarters.
"These games help cadets make the transition to real-life situations. Plus they're fun; the trainees want to take them home," he said.Gaming also lets them make mistakes which can otherwise be costly in the real world, he added. Besides their own instincts, players can use many tools. They can use measuring tape to size up car skid marks; snap pictures of impact points; collect samples like glass pieces for lab tests; use flash lights and even call a police operations room. "Their performance is tracked. We can play back [the episode] and view it in 3D, zoom in or enter the game at any point," he said.
Hamad Al Awar, Head of Crime Scene Reconstruction Section, Dubai Police, added: "We can even create digital facial reconstructions based on remains of skulls." Trials were run during last week's Dubai World Game Expo. "Visitors were shocked to learn this is an in-house production of Dubai Police," he said.
