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Urban Shield 2013
12 years ago
This past Sunday I had the privilege of participating in the Urban Shield exercise here in the Bay Area. Urban Shield is a training competition for police tactical teams, bomb squads, and fire departments. It is held in various cities and counties and teams from around the world come to participate. Here in the Bay Area, the event is hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office and involves a variety of scenarios including dignitary rescue, hijacked trains/planes/buses, an attack on the Bay Bridge, military installation attacks, high rise terrorist takeovers, active shooters, school shooters, and CBRN attacks.
Teams have included local, county, state, and federal tactical units from around the country and even some international teams have participated over the years such as the French National Police RAID team and the YAMAM team from the Israeli Border Police (who won first place in 2010 and 2011). This year in addition to Bay Area agencies we had participants from the Orange County (FL) Sheriff's Department and the Dallas PD as well as the CORE team from Brazil's Polícia Civil.
My part was as a role player as a hostage in a high rise terrorist attack set at the iconic 555 California Street building. This gave me a unique first-person perspective of simulated gun battles between the terrorist role players and tactical teams from a plethora of agencies such as the California Highway Patrol, Hayward PD, Alameda County SO, Martinez PD, Walnut Creek PD, Berkeley PD, and other various local agencies here in the Bay Area.
These officers and deputies have literally been at this nonstop since Friday through Monday going from site to site. Imagine yourself as Jack Bauer in 3 seasons of "24" back-to-back, no sleep, no rest in-between except for whatever power nap they can catch on the bus on the way to the next scenario. And in spite of the sleep deprivation and the variety of unfamiliar surroundings, I was not hit by a single errant round during the entire exercise.
I've heard there were protests in Oakland to the holding of Urban Shield this year, the protestors (that is the bona fide ones who weren't anarchists looking for an excuse to riot) arguing that this exercise creates a more military police presence and is a waste of money. Aside from the fact that the only participants are tactical teams who are already militarized police units (patrol officers don't participate); Boston has shown that a terrorist attack can happen anywhere when it's least expected. And failure to train is training to fail. This exercise, besides fostering good will and camaraderie between different police teams from around the world, gives what I can describe as the closest to real-world training and practice you can get without using live ammunition.
This was a unique experience to see all these tactical teams actually engage bad guys up-close-and-personal. And I only wish I could've been a role player for all the scenarios so I could learn from all the different facets. I also wish I could've seen the CORE team during my time slot, I wanted to see if they were going to give their commands to the bad guys in Portuguese. XD
You guys may have your detractors out there, but this Shep is not one of them. Go teams!
Teams have included local, county, state, and federal tactical units from around the country and even some international teams have participated over the years such as the French National Police RAID team and the YAMAM team from the Israeli Border Police (who won first place in 2010 and 2011). This year in addition to Bay Area agencies we had participants from the Orange County (FL) Sheriff's Department and the Dallas PD as well as the CORE team from Brazil's Polícia Civil.
My part was as a role player as a hostage in a high rise terrorist attack set at the iconic 555 California Street building. This gave me a unique first-person perspective of simulated gun battles between the terrorist role players and tactical teams from a plethora of agencies such as the California Highway Patrol, Hayward PD, Alameda County SO, Martinez PD, Walnut Creek PD, Berkeley PD, and other various local agencies here in the Bay Area.
These officers and deputies have literally been at this nonstop since Friday through Monday going from site to site. Imagine yourself as Jack Bauer in 3 seasons of "24" back-to-back, no sleep, no rest in-between except for whatever power nap they can catch on the bus on the way to the next scenario. And in spite of the sleep deprivation and the variety of unfamiliar surroundings, I was not hit by a single errant round during the entire exercise.
I've heard there were protests in Oakland to the holding of Urban Shield this year, the protestors (that is the bona fide ones who weren't anarchists looking for an excuse to riot) arguing that this exercise creates a more military police presence and is a waste of money. Aside from the fact that the only participants are tactical teams who are already militarized police units (patrol officers don't participate); Boston has shown that a terrorist attack can happen anywhere when it's least expected. And failure to train is training to fail. This exercise, besides fostering good will and camaraderie between different police teams from around the world, gives what I can describe as the closest to real-world training and practice you can get without using live ammunition.
This was a unique experience to see all these tactical teams actually engage bad guys up-close-and-personal. And I only wish I could've been a role player for all the scenarios so I could learn from all the different facets. I also wish I could've seen the CORE team during my time slot, I wanted to see if they were going to give their commands to the bad guys in Portuguese. XD
You guys may have your detractors out there, but this Shep is not one of them. Go teams!
I've seen the argument for police becoming militarized. This same argument is heard for the military becoming "people oriented" or community styled policing. The truth is the world has changed and requires those on the frontline to adapt and become extremely versatile.