AUBURN – The guns are real. The suspects are real. Frantic voices are coming over police radios and things happen very fast.

In what is known as “interactive use of force” training, police officers use their service weapons to fire rounds at others posing as suspects. The bullets are real.

Only instead of deadly lead being fired, the bullets carry marking paint similar to that used in paintball competitions.

The training, also known as “simmunitions,” is much more realistic than typical firearms training, in which police fire at cardboard cutouts or metal targets.

“Instead of shooting at paper targets, we have actors and scripted scenarios,” said Auburn Lt. Tim Cougle, one of the department’s training officers. “The radios are going crazy and the officers have to call in. The adrenaline really gets pumping.”

Owners of the Maine Cage Factory building on Hutchins Street donated their space to allow the officers to train inside and outside this week.

The scenarios were realistic and frightening: domestic situations, dangerous traffic stops and hostage situations. In one scenario, cops had to respond to a situation in which a fellow officer was being held at gunpoint.

In the end, police were able to assess how they did – the officers’ bullets left red paint on their targets. The suspects left red blotches as marks of a direct hit.

Cougle and three other officers went to an instructors’ school earlier this year where they were trained in the use of the paint technology.

The Auburn Police Department used grant money to pay for modifications to their guns and for the paint-laden ammunition.

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