It likely wouldn't have helped Williams, 50, whom family members say had become deaf in one ear.
Williams was also listening to music through ear buds, relatives say, when, according to police video, Birk approached him from behind and yelled three times in rapid order, "Put the knife down."
The King County Prosecutor's Office is conducting an inquest into the shooting, which the Seattle Police Department's Firearms Review Board initially deemed unjustified.
What the inquest won't determine is whether the training video had any impact on the John T. Williams incident.
Lt. John Hayes, who facilitated making the video, said he has "no idea" whether Birk saw the video, but he's glad it was in the works long before Williams was shot.
"I was extremely happy that we had done the video, that it was something that was in the works, in progress long before an incident took place, before John T. Williams," he said.
"It wasn't done in reaction to -- that's really important."
Hayes wonders whether it's enough.
"Even though things can happen that can be so devastating, it's, 'What are we doing to help prevent this from happening again in the future, is there something we all learned? Is this a tool that will help officers and members of the community even better?'"
Deaf, or hearing impaired?
SPD's training video deals with the needs of the deaf who know American Sign Language, but it doesn't address the much larger and growing population of people who, like Williams, have grown hard of hearing over time.
"A relatively small fraction of persons who cannot hear are deaf," said Jan Doherty, public information officer for the Spokane Fire Department. "The largest percentage by far are the hard of hearing."
Last year, Doherty helped make a 14-minute training video for Spokane police and firefighters. It covers deafness and hearing loss -- an important distinction.
Doherty said people with cochlear implants in their ears don't hear sounds the same way as other people. And just because someone wears a hearing aid is no guarantee they can understand what's being said.
"Just to amplify the sound may not help them hear it," Doherty said.
More hearing loss
SPD officers will likely have more frequent encounters with the hearing impaired in the future, simply because their ranks are swelling. Baby boomers are the fastest-growing population of people losing their hearing, said Susie Burdick, chief executive of Seattle's Hearing, Speech & Deafness Center, which helped SPD's Community Outreach Section make the video.
Thanks to loud music or exposure to high noise levels at work or in the military, hearing loss is also happening earlier in life in the 40s, 50s and even in teen years, research has shown.
But police departments haven't caught up with this trend. Across the nation, few police forces have any training dedicated to deafness, said Hayes, who asked an officer to look into what others have done.
This communication breakdown has likely hindered relations with police, Seattle Police Chief John Diaz acknowledges this at the end of the training video. He said the deaf community has been leery of law enforcement for years.
Noncompliant, or deaf?
After seeing the video, it's easy to understand why. In one play-acted scenario, an officer in a patrol car pulls over a deaf driver who has run a stop sign.
"The officer is unaware the violator is deaf," the narrator says.
The driver stops and gets out of his car. From behind the door of his patrol car, the officer draws his gun and yells at the man to stay in his car and get his hands up.
The man does neither.
The officer radios to base that he's got a "noncompliant" male.
"Get me another unit," he says.