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       The drill at the D.C. police academy Monday began with an instructor playing a man who was angry that his wife had cheated on him with a teacher. The agitated husband had entered a school in the scenario and was waiting in the teacher’s classroom to confront him with a baseball bat.

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       The D.C. police officers who were called to the scene had a simple but daunting task: defuse the situation so they didn’t have to resort to their guns.

       The officers eased just through the door of the mock classroom and began a dialogue while keeping a safe distance. The husband mentioned he was a youth football coach, so they used that as an opening.

       “If you put that bat down, we can talk,” one of the officers said. His partner added: “Everybody looks up to you. You’re the coach, so why mess that up? Let them still love you.”

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       The man still held the bat, but the patter rolled on. The man wanted the school to know about the impropriety, so the officers told him he could file a complaint. He eventually calmed and set the bat down, telling the officers he would sit down with them.

       An instructor blew a whistle. The officers had completed their mission.

       Next year, all 3,300 D.C. police officers will begin running through such drills as part of a new training program aimed at helping them peacefully resolve situations involving people in crisis or armed with any of an array of weapons that are not firearms, such as bats, knives and rocks.

       D.C. police officers already receive some de-escalation training, but the program, known as Integrating Communications Assessment and Tactics (ICAT), will flesh it out with more strategies and lifelike drills. The 16-hour course is used by 120 law enforcement agencies in 30 states.

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       David Hong, commander of the Metropolitan Police Academy, said the training is a departure from the tactics many in the public associate with officers engaging in such encounters, such as drawing their guns and shouting at a suspect to drop their weapon.

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       “It gives them the tools to defuse the situation,” Hong said. “Understanding to slow the scenario down … to talk with your partner, to know your surroundings, to know that the doorway is there. In the situation where he bum rushes the officers, they can close the door.”

       Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, the think tank that developed the training, said it grew out the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” project, which created a nationwide database of police shootings.

       Fatal Force: More than 9,000 fatal shootings by police officers since 2015

       Wexler said he was struck by a statistic in the Post investigation showing that a number of fatal police shootings involved victims who were not armed with guns. Sometime later, he was traveling in Scotland, where police officers generally don’t carry firearms, and a question occurred to him: How do they de-escalate situations when someone has a knife?

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       Wexler brought a group of police chiefs to Scotland to see how officers there handled de-escalation. Then he began developing ICAT. He reasoned that one of the most effective ways to curb police shootings and the turmoil and distrust they cause with the public was by reducing shootings of people who aren’t carrying firearms.

       “Those are usually the ones — not all — that become controversial,” Wexler said. “Those are the ones we think we can change how police handle because other countries have.”

       The training emphasizes officers listening to the subjects they are confronting, asking questions and building a rapport that can ease tension. It also trains officers to assess the situation, including the mental state of the subject and the range of options for addressing the incident. Finally, it teaches tactics that emphasize distance, cover and time to reduce the chance of having to use deadly force.

       All D.C. police officers already receive two days of training in mental health issues or crisis intervention.

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