Police stage mock crisis in training exercise

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This article was published 15/03/2022 (1691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Residents on Cascade Bay may have woken up Tuesday morning to heavily armed police officers outside their doors, but the scenario was all part of police training in case of a real emergency.

The Brandon Police Service emergency response team ran through a mock crisis in the east-end neighbourhood as part of a training exercise, public information officer Sgt. Kirby Sararas said. The team is comprised of the tactical response unit, crisis negotiating team and incident command.

The tactical response unit was on Cascade Bay with the armoured rescue vehicle. When the Sun arrived at approximately 10 a.m., there were four officers dressed in tactical gear outside a residence.

Two had their weapons pointed at the house — one standing in the vehicle’s roof hatch and another at the back door. The guns had a blue tip and blue paint on the magazines.

There were other officers and support staff co-ordinating behind the scenes, Sararas said, and “actors” inside the house.

The scenario itself was fake and meant to train officers for real incidents. Sararas said she couldn’t give specifics on the mock scenario or how many officers took part, citing security risks, but the scenario involved weapons and was “high-risk.”

The units had to work together to come to a safe conclusion, she said.

The training was complete by approximately 12:30 p.m.

“We just like to practise a lot of different possibilities in a safe, controlled environment so that if the day comes when the real thing happens, we are prepared,” she said.

It gives officers an opportunity to practise different roles in their team and help police identify equipment needs, she said.

“It could be something as simple as winter gear or cold-weather gear or rain gear … it can highlight certain things like that for us to flesh that stuff out so that if we are coming in a real-world scenario, our members can approach these kinds of things under optimal conditions,” she said.

Police training isn’t usually as public as Tuesday’s exercise. It sometimes takes place at a more private place, like a rural residence, but the opportunity came up for an urban location. Sararas said it was more similar to locations in Brandon police usually respond to than a farm.

The scenario itself was somewhat similar to ones police had encountered before but was meant to be something new for the crisis negotiating team, she said.

“We always try to come up with something new to make them think on their feet so that they can practise different forms of communicating with people that have different crises going on.”

» dmay@brandonsun.com

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