Recruiting gets a new life online

that holding a virtual recruiting seminar in Second Life would be a good way to differentiate the VPD from other law enforcement agencies and reach out to tech-savvy young applicants. "Tech-savvy police officers are key to the success of future investigations. As society changes, policing has to change as well," said McQuiggin. "We're going to have to have more officers that understand Facebook, YouTube, instant messaging and all these technologies because crime will naturally migrate to these environments, just like it has with things like fraud on the Internet."

As in most other organizations around the world, these new technologies are not well understood by senior management at the VPD, and selling the idea of a virtual reality recruiting seminar wasn't easy to do. Adding to the difficulty was the lack of experience by recruiters in new technologies, and lack of expertise in this area in the IT department.

Fortunately the VPD's Chief Constable, Jim Chu, had a solid background in technology and was quite supportive. A past Chair of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Informatics Committee, Chu argued convincingly for the increased use of IT in all aspects of policing in his book Law Enforcement Information Technology, published by CRC Press in 2001.

"Luddites in policing beware: the train is leaving the station," he wrote. "It is imperative that IT becomes a prime consideration in all aspects of the public safety service delivery chain."

Another supporter of the project was Howard Chow, a Sergeant in Recruiting who was a spokesperson for the VPD at the time the seminar was held. At a press conference announcing the initiative, Chow told the media, "We're at a crossroads right now. Old techniques and old ways of doing things aren't working and we've got to look outside the box, and this is what the Second Life recruiting seminar is all about."

STRONG SUPPORTING CAST

In order to create the Second Life seminar, the VPD enlisted the aid of experts from the Masters of Digital Media program, headed by director Gerry Sinclair. The program, offered at the Great Northern Way Campus, an emerging digital village in the heart of Vancouver, is a collaborative initiative involving Simon Fraser University, the University of B.C., Emily Carr School of Art, and the B.C. Institute of Technology.

"We have a virtual university campus in Second Life, and we were able to host the VPD seminar on it," said Joanna Robinson, a research assistant with the Masters of Digital Media program and a key contributor to the project. "We helped them run the session, made things like custom uniforms for them, and got a video made of the event."

In order to get accurate looking uniforms, photographs of real uniforms were taken from a variety of angles. These were imported into Photoshop, where the outfits were created and eventually imported into Second Life and put on the avatars of the three VPD officers involved in the event: McQuiggin, Detective Cherie Duggan, and Inspector Steve Rai.

"Not only did we Photoshop the textures for the shirt and pants, but we also created a utility belt with things like their gun and mace on it," said Robinson. "We also created a virtual duffel bag to give to seminar visitors containing information and goodies, like a VPD T-shirt that they could put on their avatar."

Visitors could even relax with a cup of virtual copy as they attended the session, although to avoid the stereotype, no donuts were on offer.

THE SEMINAR GOES LIVE

Those attending the event on May 31, 2007 witnessed a fairly faithful recreation of the real-life seminars held by the VPD about once a month.

McQuiggin and Duggan -- in avatar form -- were at the front of the room, giving a traditional PowerPoint presentation. Meanwhile, a VPD recruiting video was shown on a virtual screen behind them.

If a visitor wanted to ask a question, she could do so in real time by texting it, and the police avatars