BreakAway, Institute of Justice Partner to Help Public Safety Personnel Deal With Crisis Situations

BALTIMORE, MD, Nov. 7, 2003 -- To help public safety personnel better respond to crisis situations, BreakAway, Ltd., the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), and NIJ's National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center are partnering to create a computer game that models acts of terrorism, school hostage situations, and natural disasters.

Entitled "Incident Commander," the game "will help incident commanders and other public safety personnel to train and plan for how they might respond to a wide range of critical incidents," says BreakAway President Deborah Tillett.

According to Tillett, the game "will offer public safety agencies the flexibility to download or add maps of their own jurisdictions in order to add realism to the training program."

The software also will be sophisticated enough to allow public safety agencies to run actual crisis management in real time.

Once production is complete, "Incident Commander" will be distributed by NIJ free of charge to more than 30,000 city, county, and state public safety agencies nationwide. NIJ is the research and development arm of the Department of Justice.

"The goal, ultimately, will be to create an Incident Commander Community website that will allow for the development of additional services, updates, and new crisis scenarios," notes Tillett. "Until then, the distribution by NIJ will make this sophisticated training tool available at the right price -- free."

BreakAway, Ltd. is a Hunt Valley, Maryland based developer of advanced training models, simulations and 3-D visualization tools for entertainment and military applications. BreakAway Games, BreakAway Federal Systems and BreakAway, are registered trademarks of BreakAway, Ltd. 10600 York Road - Suite 200 - Hunt Valley, MD 21030 - 410.683.1702 - Fax: 410.683.1706.

SOURCE BreakAway, Ltd