The pop-pop-pop of gunfire cracked just as the rain started to fall. Then the screams began. Within moments, civilians lay strewn across the ground, some lifeless, others writhing in pain. Blood flowed in streams that pooled with the rainwater on the ground littered with shell casings.
Three gunmen quickly opened fire on a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department armored BearCat truck arriving in response. .One assailant stood on a third-floor apartment balcony and, as deputies came closer, threw a Molotov cocktail at two white cars parked below. The explosion sent a blast of heat and sound, its boom punctuated by the gunman’s AK-47.
“Help me!” bellowed a man rolling on the ground, blood shooting from his severed leg. Another man groaned next to him,
In fact, the rounds were blanks, the Molotov cocktail wasn’t lit, the smoke came from a machine. The explosion was controlled, the victims and gunmen were actors, and the blood was fake.
The deputies, firefighters and doctors from across the region were real. They were in a simulation in a commercial lot on the north end of San Diego, conducted by Strategic Operations, a company run by former Hollywood producers and military combat veterans, reports Stateline
First responders and law enforcement agents have for decades used simulations to train for mass casualty events.
In recent years, as mass shootings have become increasingly common, the simulations have become more realistic. Now they feature visceral sound effects, trained actors, pyrotechnics and even virtual reality. The trainings also have become more and more expensive for public agencies.
Hyper-realistic simulations are essential for learning how to respond to an active shooter, triage mass casualties and coordinate among departments in a chaotic environment, said Sgt. Colin Hebeler of the Infrastructure Security Group in the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The department has two facilities where deputies go through similar simulation training.
“If we can provide these trainings that are as close to the real-life event as possible, you will actually induce that same kind of stress and the reaction that you might have during a real-life incident,” he said.
The police response to the school massacre in Uvalde, Tex., showed “layer upon layer upon layer of failures,” said Jaclyn Schildkraut of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government. Simulations highlight the sights, sounds and smells of an active shooter event in a controlled environment so the failures seen in Uvalde don’t occur, she said.
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