How much crowd control and crimes of opportunity have we seen in a major earthquake or during a wildfire? Urban Shield has been the subject of annual protests in the Bay Area since 2013, notably in 2016, when a few dozen people were arrested at the gates to the event. Yoga Store Urban OM | Website managed by . Only eight police officers go to the SWAT *competition* so pulling them out will not materially affect the BPDs ability to respond to a disaster. Any (neutral) professional involved in these types of events will clearly state that they have little, if any, benefit as training. There are more frequent active shooter situations all over the country. Some crime stats are up and are slightly over their historic lows. Browse 2 Family Doctors near Simpsonville, SC who accept Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance below sort by distance, name, gender, online appointments (book online with one doctor), accepted insurance and more. SWAT Can you imagine life without Berkeleyside? It will not affect the BFD. Family Doctors. Yet, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) has succeeded in improving Urban Shield each of the four years of its existence. The prognosis for attending the following day, when the SWAT, fire and emergency operation drills would get underway, was not looking too good, given the numerous visits from public information staff during the first day. | TEST SCORES: What they show | HOLIDAY LIGHTS: Share your pics! Thank you. Wi-Fi surfing protection & auto caching and history cleaner. Pulling out of Urban Shield will mean a loss of highly trained, experienced and dedicated officers and the citys future ability to properly respond to disaster events. There is no other comparable scenario-based training that helps them prepare for life-threatening incidents. This is window dressing. We are, in fact, living through one of the lowest crime rates in over 30 years. received Urban Shield training. The FBI and our own BPD have made this abundantly clear. | WE'RE HIRING: Cover public safety. A valuable "must have/must read" for all SWAT teams, commanders, team leaders, operators and anyone involved in managing a SWAT team. Planning: Sound tactical and contingency plans. The City of Boston's earlier Urban Shield drills, one in May, 2011 and another inNovember, 2012, offer an ideal opportunity to consider how well the program functioned during a true-life emergency 'situation,' whether it is a valuable tool in terrorist situations and whether anything of significance has been accomplished to justify the dismantling of the nation's once-sacrosanct civil liberties. Due to the board of supervisors edict, assault weapons had been replaced with simunition guns, although flashbangs and gas canisters remained. Furthermore, there is nothing in the scenario described that necessitated Urban Shield as a venue. Many public connections are not secure and can cause you to become vulnerable to hackers and government surveillance agencies who can view and steal personal and essential information from your devices. Very few of Berkeleys SRT team, let alone the vast majority of officers in the Bay Area and the rest of the country, participate in Urban Shield. For the past seven years, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office has hosted the "Urban Shield" SWAT team competition at various locations across the Bay Area, attracting dozens of tactical . But appearances do not tell the whole tale. Twenty nine SWAT teams from California and beyond competed in Urban Shield 2010 48 continuous hours of 26 "full scale" tactical scenarios, four medical checkpoints, three fire, and one EOD scenario. Bahasa Indonesia, Deutsch, English, Franais, Nederlands, Trke, espaol, portugus (Brasil), , (), . Urban Shield will: The following is an overview checklist of the Urban Shield tactical judging criteria: Leadership: Solicits input from team. The proposal before the City Council is to continue participating in the aspects of Urban Shield that prepare for mass care and sheltering operations. We respect your data and privacy. I have spent countless hours on this issue over the last two years. Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. The raffle drawing prize was a gift certificate at a weapons distributor. So to mark this historic occasion, I decided to attend. Executive Director, Media Alliance (www.media-alliance.org) and co-coordinator, Oakland Privacy (www.oaklandprivacy.org). Urban Shield allows you to protect your data from leaking to the wrong hands or prevent identity theft and increase your safety online, regardless of whether youre in a public place or your own home. 14.99. Urban Shield is a competition for the Bay Area's SWAT teams, fire departments, and hazmat and . Join Omar Macy, the designer of the 468 Professional Training Rifle (468 PTR) as he chronicles the latest Urban Shield multinational S.W.A.T. 00:00. If you are like everyone else, then you probably use public Wi-Fi quite frequently. I chose the third option. Dr. Rajesh Kedar is a reputable internist and primary care doctor. It is a terrible shame that the BPD has spent so much time on this issue rather than simply course correcting and addressing Berkeleys real safety needs. You can follow the task forces progress here. To enable us to block unwanted ads and provide you with safe browsing features, we need to access and collect certain information, such as: URLs you click, the ads displayed for you and your interaction with the ads, history, click stream data, and IP address. Regional hazmat teams were engaging in their own solitary exercises elsewhere, presumably also summoning imaginary SWAT and fire teams when needed. Check out the response to the questions of where officers get the training they need to go to the Urban Shield competition. Urban Shield is dead. Urban Shield is a competition for the Bay Areas SWAT teams, fire departments, and hazmat and emergency operations teams and a law enforcement equipment expo, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Securitys UASI program as a counter-terrorism exercise. Liaisons: Assigned to each tactical team, responsible to ensure teams arrive on time and safely, and assists with logistics, briefings. What criteria are used to judge SWAT teams participating in Urban Shield? South Carolina. 72 mi. After the event was concluded, The Alameda Sun newspaper reported that a tactical exercise during the 2018 Urban Shield event was held in protected marine bird sanctuary land on Alameda Point. He began his career by earning a medical degree from the University of Toledo and completing his residency in internal medicine at OhioHealth, Riverside Methodist Hospital . We wish to make it clear, we do not want to know your identity, preferences or any information about you personally, all as detailed in the privacy policy (https://www.urban-vpn.com/about-us/privacy/). I am also a team lead for a Search and Rescue team and have participated in multiple mass casualty training scenarios. Utilizes other resources (such as blueprints and employees). This is easier said than done. This is absurd on its face. 20.88. The CERT exercises at Urban Shield are carried out in isolation from the other first responder exercises. A coalition of anti-police groups, Muslim associations . Robert "Bob" O'Brien Cleveland SWAT Ret. Alameda County has convened another task force to put together a plan to reboot the Countys emergency preparedness programa. Support Berkeleyside from as little as $1 it only takes a minute. Morale. The BPDs union is determined to add officers and increase compensation they are scaring the people who live here to achieve that. + 50.00 P&P. RECLAR PURE VITA SERUM 30ML BNWB. Site Commanders (Controllers): Set up and operate their related scenario. COMING SOON. 30.00. The above Urban Shield judging criteria is one of the best, most comprehensive SWAT team overviews and checklists I've seen. Rehearsal. In the salad days of Urban Shield (the event began in 2007), the expo featured a large collection of macho right-wing t-shirts, including a Black Rifles Matter dig at BLM and a This Is My Peace Sign rifle butt. Crime in Berkeley is historically way down, over 35% of police activity is directly related to homelessness. But despite obediently registering on the event website in advance and generating a press credential, as well as having visibly discussed the event with both KTVU-Channel 2 and Black Agenda Report in 2017, much of the first day was spent in regular negotiations with suspicious Sheriff Department staff. All Rights Reserved. Guns are proliferating in our society. For the 29 SWAT teams, Urban Shield doubles as a competition one I describe as a challenging, real-world simulation "gruelathon.". Oddly, this vendor was hosting an exercise pegged as featuring de-escalation techniques and the use of non-lethal equipment. The Oath Keepers were not present in 2018, and the event mostly featured a police horse petting area, an earthquake simulator, a stop-the-bleeding class, and info booths for groups like the Bay Area Young Marines. The scenario was a house where two hostages were being held, one visibly and one in a room behind the main one, and the goal was to get into the apartment and free both hostages without killing anyone. By clicking the submit button below, you are agreeing with Bobit Business Medias Privacy Policy and this outlined level of consent. On Tuesday, March 27th, the Stop Urban Shield coalition put an end to the largest militarized SWAT training in the world. Equipment assignments. If Urban Shield is any indication, the citizens of the communities in which these teams operate should feel supremely confident in their police. This event begins Thursday, September 6, 2018 and ends on Monday September 10, 2018. - information about the content that you viewed (the ad campaign) On September 7th and 8th, I attended the Bay Areas police militarization expo, Urban Shield. Daniel Robinson is a resident of Berkeley and a citizen first responder. Other booths featured a battering ram booth from Bear Training Solutions (BTS), which SWAT officers attempted to pound into submission, which led to great crashing sounds throughout the day and two cleverly placed side by side booths featuring a drone manufacturer and Drone Killer equipment to knock hostile drones out of the sky. Love podcasts or audiobooks? All of our BPD officers should receive active shooter training. Delivered to your inbox at 5 p.m., the Daily Briefing brings you all the latest Berkeley news in one handy place. Weve been providing Berkeley with compelling, trustworthy local news for 13 years. Distributors like Safariland displayed impressive piles of assault weapons. This afternoon the City Council will decide whether or not to limit participation in Urban Shield by the Berkeley police department this year. Members of the Fremont PD, winners of last year's Urban Shield competition, breach the door, deploy the flash-bang, and make entry into the Alameda Co. Sheriff Dept. Something went wrong. 2670 Mills Park Dr, Suite 200, Rock Hill, SC 29732. This is primarily a fire department issue. The focus of Urban Shield is on mass care and sheltering operations. Privacy Policy The venues are spread across 700 square miles of the San Francisco Bay Area. After several heavily attended and contentious public discussions about the impact of military style war games training for local police officers (including one in the City of Berkeley in June of 2017 that itself ended in injured attendees), the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, a year after issuing 12 Principles to try to reform the event, finally pulled the plug. Unfortunately, the SWAT team that was supposed to carry out the exercise was said to have dropped out of the event, so all the group was able to do was get a guided tour of the empty parking lot by an Execushield employee. Among the many excellent SWAT competitions to choose from, Urban Shield's "full-scale exercise" format is widely considered the most realistically challenging of all. Police departments all over the Bay Area are below their peaks. Timing/coordination. Cooperation. In the first six months of 2018, Berkeleyside reported a total of 29 gun-related incidents: robberies, shootings including one death, and a sexual assault at gunpoint 14 more gun-related crimes than in all of 2017. The Sacramento SWAT team ended up disabling the perpetrators with Pepperball shots. This browser extension will blend seamlessly with Chrome and will allow you the freedom to be safe and secure online while using any hotspot in the world. The group that included task force members, City of Alameda staff and some press was taken to four exercise locations on Saturday. Identifies and assigns tasks. Maintains control. Participating SWAT teams like Berkeleys SRT go through over 30 training scenarios over the 48-hour period held at locations all over the Bay Area, with at most four hours of sleep. Coordinated by the Alameda County Sheriffs Department, it attracts law enforcement agencies from around the region, has included the Homeland Security Investigations division of ICE (in 2017), has hosted a variety of foreign SWAT and secret police teams from countries like Brazil, Israel, Bahrain, and Hong Kong (China) and has been exported in concept to the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center in Amman, Jordan. If the police are concerned about their ability to respond to disasters they should come up with a comprehensive plan to do that (which they tellingly do not have). Nika Megino , Patch Staff Posted Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 6:22 pm PT | Updated Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 7:00 pm PT Moreover, the Urban Shield competition and expo don't reflect our values as a community. As for community involvement in disaster preparedness, last year was the first year that the CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) were included in the weekend events, but they had very little connection to the activities of the police teams. Urban Shield is a comprehensive all-hazards training program for police, fire, hazmat, EMS and emergency management. Terrorists had stolen radioactive material from a laboratory and were making and deploying a bomb. Find a Doctor. + P&P. Pixi Beauty Overnight Glow Serum 10% Glycolic Acid Exfoliating Soothing Gel 30ml. Check out the response to the questions of where officers get the training they need to go to the Urban Shield competition. However our streets are much, much safer than they have been since the early 60s and violent crime is a fraction of what it was just a few decades ago. Newark Editor , Patch Staff Posted Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 8:03 pm PT | Updated Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 8:05 pm PT Lieutenant Alyson Hart was responsible for planning and intelligence, while Captain Erik Upson was the incident commander; Hart and Upson were trained in Urban Shield in 2010 and 2011. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. The 2017 event had been marred by the presence of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group whose presence at a booth dispensing their literature was captured by a KTVU news clip in 2017. A member of the TREXPO Advisory Board, Sgt. From this sort of critique we have to extrapolate that every first responder in the country needs to participate in Urban Shield, if we need it in Berkeley we need it pretty much everywhere, right? The venues are spread across 700 square miles of the San Francisco Bay Area. For Berkeley's SRT, Urban Shield is more of a competition than an educational event. The stuff being the 12 Principles which had nixed surveillance methods and crowd control techniques from the event and expo. Help keep our community-funded reporting strong in 2023 by donating to our end-of-year fundraising campaign. Breach/secondary breach points. Video from Berkeley Police Review Commission meeting 6/13/18. What I saw at Urban Shield was starkly different from what I had been prepared to see based on characterizations of the program. This turned out to be Pepperball, which are pepper spray projectiles shot from guns. November 3, 2010 Wringing our hands and blaming BPD for an insufficient response after a violent protest, mass shooting or pedestrians being run down at a Berkeley street festival cannot be an option. After some small talk, I looked at some literature while the salesperson started discussing the product with a SWAT team officer from American Canyon and explaining how the cameras could be hidden in trees during protests. Emphasis on team at all levels. Despite the massive expenditure of tax dollars, the Urban Shield event is closed to the public with only a few modes of entry. One of the best ways to find out how a team compares with others is participating in one of the many excellent SWAT competitions held across the nation. Control checkpoints. Urban Shield is a rare opportunity for "good" tactical teams to become even better teams learn their strengths and weaknesses. by Robert O'Brien First responders have had to deal with multi-day events for a long, long time. ), View the video: https://www.facebook.com/cschwartz72/videos/10156416467608810/, BPD Scandal: Whistleblower reveals racism, anti-homeless sentiment, overtime abuse and arrest quotas, Berkeley Vehicle Dwellers Win Settlement in Court, August Invasion of People's Park Sparks More Questions than Answers, Organizing for Resistance? How do Urban Shield scenarios that emphasize well trained and heavily armed terrorists prepare the police for the dangers we actually face? Learn on the go with our new app. Every scenario is based on a real-world event. The vendor comments seemed to indicate the implementation of the principles at the event had been more along the lines of dont get caught. 20.88. Wed 9am - 7pm. + P&P. Pixi Beauty Overnight Glow Serum 10% Glycolic Acid Exfoliating Soothing Gel 30ml. The fourth exercise of the day, and the third drill of the SWAT team competition, was sponsored by Facebook and held at some nondescript office building a few blocks from Hacker Way. The Central County SWAT team is made up of officers from BART PD, Martinez PD, Pleasant Hill PD, San Ramon PD, and Walnut Creek PD. The logistics and preparation for an event of this complexity and magnitude are mind-boggling. The BFD is highly trained and responded well in this instance. Clearly assigned tasks/roles. The secure and easy all-access connection to your content. Communication. Sat 11am - 4pm. The size of the force is now at a historic low. This 48-hour exercise will be managed utilizing the National Incident Management . Deploys sniper/observer team. Rules of engagement. Tue 9am - 7pm. Mask your identity and add a privacy layer to any connection - Public or Secured STREETS AND HOUSING: What's next after Measure L? Donate to Berkeleysideand support independent local journalism. Motivator. shoot-house. Urban Shield judging begins with extensive evaluator briefings with instructions outlining the rules and judging criteria (particularly important for exercise and tactical evaluators). The competition pitted 32 tactical teams throughout the nation against one another. The centerpiece of Urban Shield is a two-day SWAT team competition that requires teams to complete dozens of high-fidelity, high-realism missions. Download Urban Shield here with just one click and you are ready to go! Regional Participation in Urban Shield SWAT competition, Fire, and CERT scenarios. The January 2017 12 Principles had asked the event to desist from racial stereotyping, avoid crowd control and surveillance technique training, prevent the sale or transfer of assault weapons at the event, end any participation from countries with a documented history of human rights violations, and exclude vendors whose gear contained derogatory messages. The scenarios participated in are extremely unrealistic and irrelevant to the job that we hire the police to perform in Berkeley. Its an accumulation of skills. Lt. Angela Hawk at PRC Mtg June 13 in response to the question of where officers get their training in preparation for the games. Urban Shield "training" is really the opportunity to DEMONSTRATE their training. The criminals are bolder. After some dialogue with county task force members, a seat was navigated on a guided tour for Saturdays exercises. Know Your Rights. The third exercise we attended was at a Redwood City credit union and was a SWAT tactical exercise in a parking lot sponsored by the Redwood City PD with some assistance from Execushield, a military security outfit. Team Movement: Communications (hand signals, verbal, and radio). Safety Coordinator: Formulates, implements, and enforces safety procedures. Exhibits command presence/self-confidence. Demonstrates flexibility. Medical support is readily available from mobile medical (ALS/BLS) units and medical checkpoints. team competi. Teamwork: Cohesiveness/integrity. Bookmark +. In a real-world hostage situation at Children's Hospital in 2010, officers successfully resolved the crisis without loss of life but in an Urban Shield hostage scenario based on the event, teams "won" by escalating and killing the perpetrators. The streets are meaner. Gives clear direction. See above the BPDs union is currently in heated contract negotiations. The Board of Supervisors stated that 2018 would be the last year of Urban Shield as we know it. The fifth annual Bay Area Urban Shield event, which is organized by the Alameda County sheriff's department, took place Oct. 25-28 in locations around the region. 360-degree security. Team brief/brief back. Use of cover and concealment. Mon 9am - 7pm. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) will host Urban Shield 2018, a planned training exercise involving local, national, and international first responder agencies. Another booth featured facial recognition technology from Gemalto. Killing Urban Shield. In 2009, Oakland Police Department's SWAT team won the Urban Shield competition. Area Commanders: Responsible for organizing command centers and scenarios within their geographical area of responsibility. Tactical Evaluators: Experienced tactical operators and trainers responsible for team scoring. There are specific protocols and planning that go into this. You saw only a small part of what was going on. Our reporters deliver high-impact, trustworthy local news about Berkeley each and every day. + 50.00 P&P. RECLAR PURE VITA SERUM 30ML BNWB. 30.00. My first vendor visit was to Net Gear, who were selling surveillance cameras. Basically, the SWAT team was to storm their way into the parking lot, shoot their way through the terrorists and then call an imaginary hazmat team in time to prevent the explosion. Intelligence Gathering: Debriefs victims and witnesses. As always, vendors pushed their wares with a heaping of military bona fides, explaining to me how products were military-grade, developed in the military, battlefield-proven and basically from disinfectant to drone and everything in between, were on the fast track from Fallujah to my local law enforcement agency. Twenty nine SWAT teams from California and beyond competed in Urban Shield 2010 48 continuous hours of 26 "full scale" tactical scenarios, four medical checkpoints, three fire, and one EOD scenario. It could have to do with the generous retirement packages. Responsible for overall planning and management of the scenario during the 48-hour duration. Our police are highly compensated and work in a relatively low crime and stress situation. The SWAT scenarios and vendor show from which Berkeley would withdraw this year do not address shelter, community preparedness, or access to water and food in an emergency. Similar scenarios could have been done in the course of the BPDs normal training regimine. Its not happening because there is an exodus of our police officers. Our second exercise was out at the former Concord Naval Weapons Center, once the site of Port Chicago, where 300 people were killed in an ammunition explosion and African American workers were court martialed after they refused to continue loading ammunition, a key moment in the civil righs movement. Home. A shortened version of the 11 minute Combat Sports Network video of the 2013 Urban Shield SWAT competition. The group was told we could not witness the exercise live (this proved to pretty much be the case at all of the locations), so we watched it in the so-called situation room on closed circuit television. Everyone involved with Urban Shield is responsible for safety. Delivered to your inbox at 5 p.m., the Daily Briefing brings you all the latest Berkeley news in one handy place. 15% VITAMIN E SERUM NIGHT MASK for Face and Neck Liq Ce Anti-Aging Firming 30ml. (Check approx. Fri 11am - 7pm. Spending time at Urban Shield diminishes attention that should be better spent. Killing the perpetrators was described as academic since they had already been exposed to lethal levels of radioactivity. That team included Furthermore, threatening to leave because your community prioritizes smart, neighborhood policing and is not okay with heavy weapons, inappropriate tactics and the militarization of routine policing, is distinctly unprofessional behavior. The exercise was apocalyptic, meaning that the hazardous materials were stolen without protective equipment. Sworn officers have left Berkeley citing lack of community support, skills training and specialized assignments as their reasons to either retire early or accept better opportunities elsewhere. Hide your IP address and better hide your Digital Fingerprints As with the next exercise, one of the notable things in the tour was the imaginary hazmat team who would magically be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment to disable the bomb at the snap of a finger once the coast was clear, which didnt seem quite like the hyper-realistic training Urban Shield is said to offer. The Berkeley Police SWAT team took first place among 35 agencies in a grueling "Urban Shield" competition involving three dozen training scenarios designed to simulate real-world emergencies. Urban Shield "training" is really the opportunity to DEMONSTRATE their training. On September 7th and 8th, I attended the Bay Area's police militarization expo, Urban Shield. At Mosquito Shield of Greenville, South Carolina, our goal is to provide the best mosquito control service in Greenville with the highest levels of customer service, allowing our customers to enjoy their backyards, homes and time with family to the fullest. Far more than a competition, Urban Shield's goal is to be a "full-scale regional preparedness exercise" for high-threat incidents. Urban Shield is the comprehensive Chrome browser extension for securing your connection, and it will not slow your browsers performance and will have no effect on bandwidth. 2022 POLICE Magazine. Simpsonville. Some scenarios, due to community pushback, like this one, have been altered. Urban Shield will: Mask your identity and add a privacy layer to any connection - Public or Secured Hide your IP address and better hide your Digital Fingerprints Change your IP in Public Hotspots Block these annoying ads making your surfing easier To enable us to block unwanted ads and provide you with safe browsing features, we need to access . Im sure that some people reading this will detect a bit of exasperation. It seems that when people listen to their police review commissioners is dependent on their position on a particular issue. The booth also scanned my face effortlessly and identified me efficiently within moments, a request I had actually not made. BPD officers are some of the best-compensated officers in the region with excellent benefits. If the BPD feels that they need advanced bleeding control training (the underlying training they refer to in connection with this event) then that is available and readily accessible and should be given to every police officer. For every police review commissioner who supports Urban Shield participation, there are two who do not. In addition, most disaster scenarios involve intense action on the part of first responders that lasts for long periods (days, at least). MORE THAN 500 people filed into a special June 20 meeting of the Berkeley City Council, where they were scheduled to vote on the Berkeley Police Department's continued participation in Urban Shield, a weapons expo and SWAT training convention based in the Bay Area. Congress Votes to Confirm Its Confusion Over the State of the Latest COVID-19 Stimulus Bill, Justice, Not Unity, is What We Need Most in This Moment, Presidential Elections and the Republican-Democrat Paradigm, Mentally Ill Will Be Involuntarily Hospitalized Even If They Pose No Threat to Others, The Board of Supervisors stated that 2018 would be the last year of Urban Shield as we know it. - search engine results page The main premise of the exercise was to remember to ask the shooting victim the question, as they would not volunteer the information without being asked. Attitude. A team of Berkeley Police officers took first place at a recent Bay Area competition to gauge their preparedness in a 48-hour series of grueling emergency response drills, authorities said this week. Free for all, funded by readers. I am a certified WIlderness First Responder with hundreds of hours of advanced first aid training including CPR for the Professional Rescuer, Advanced Bleeding Control, and other specialized training. By John Lindsay-PolandAn increasingly broad set of Bay Area communities are questioning the militarized policing represented by the annual SWAT competition and military expo known as Urban Shield.San Francisco supervisors Avalos, Campos and Mar wrote their Alameda County counterparts October 6 to urge the county to "suspend its proposals for funding for Urban Shield and instead take the . I dont consider myself an expert just someone who has practical experience in this area and cares deeply about everyones safety. It was an active shooter drill in a basically empty office suite that featured a shot victim who would, if asked, direct the SWAT team to where the shooter was with some live hostages. Urban Shield. And because we believe in information equality, we keep our independent nonprofit reporting free for everyone to read. Standardized California training classes. 16 verified reviews. Here are rebuttals to the main points made in the editorials: Pulling eight officers, of over 100, out of a SWAT *competition* (it is not a training), will not materially affect the BPDs ability to respond to a disaster. Sending police officers for a 48 hour wargame is not going to bring back bike patrols. Just for the record I am a 24+ year resident of Berkeley. Rather than pretend that Urban Shield is the be all and end all for training and readiness the BPD and BFD should concentrate on our real safety needs. We inquired regarding medical assistance for the shot victim, and again an imaginary medical team would be summoned, while the SWAT team prepared to storm the rear office. Get Berkeleyside's free newsletter. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office provided the Alameda County Ad Hoc Committee on UASI with a list of all agencies that have participated in Urban Shield as SWAT, explosive ordnance disposal, HazMat, urban and maritime rescue, EMS, and CERT, not only as teams in Urban Shield, but as hosts and evaluators. The City Council will consider pulling BPD out of Urban Shield SWAT competition, for this year only. The police are required to act in almost any such incident especially in terms of crowd control and minimizing crimes of opportunity. - information about where you viewed the content (website, app, or extension). Reports of violent crime are ticking upward. Owners Alysia and Dennis Kunz have always had a desire to work together and own their . We share this web browsing data in anaggregated, anonymized format with our affiliated companies and business partners for commercial use. Team movements. Bookmarked content can then be accessed anytime on all of your logged in devices! In addition, subject to your consent through the prominent notice, we will be accessing and collecting your web browsing data that includes information on: Access to assault weapons is a huge problem in our country. In between the interrogations, most of my time was spent in the Expo, a trade show that features the latest and greatest in militarized policing gear. The numbers being used are highly selective and attempting to conclude that we have an increasing crime problem that needs to be addressed by spending more money on policing is highly debatable. In a major disaster the net effect of any (debatable) benefit those officers will have is going to be negligible to non-existent. BPD has not conducted a survey to determine why officers have left or retired. As in 2017, it was held in a church parking lot in Castro Valley, despite some reported attempts to move it to a more transit-accessible location. Most of us want foot patrols, bike cops in San Pablo Park, and traffic enforcement units across the City. Yes, I want to donate to support Berkeleyside. . If BPDs officers were so fed up they would already have left. Use tab to navigate through the menu items. The exercise was again watchable from a situation room on closed circuit camera. Urban Shield is NOT about Training Officers, https://www.facebook.com/cschwartz72/videos/10156416467608810/. - web pages visited These are not trainings, they are competitions. This includes the key positions that make it all work to coordinated perfection. Yesterday morning I found out that Berkeleyside decided to publish seven opinion pieces on the issue in support of BPDs participation in Urban Shield. The federally-funded program is . In active shooter situations there is no time to assemble the SRT team. And virtually every tactical team I know wonders how they compare with other teams. The premise was a dirty bomb. It appears that officers get trained BEFORE they go to the competition. Delegates. The city is having difficulty filling sworn officer positions and may be forced to lower its standards for employment in order to attract applicants. Urban Shield's true value is its application to the real world, where lessons learned through training take on a different, "for real," and often life-saving role. 14.99. The city has not held a city-wide earthquake drill in years, to a large extent because they have been distracted by Urban Shield. Block these annoying ads making your surfing easier So we have SWAT schools, POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training), standardized SWAT schools that people go to. Exercise Evaluators: Technical and functional experts who evaluate and provide feedback on and assess and document performance of the exercise. Despite my best efforts, I assume my ears pricked up, because the salesman put some distance between me and his conversation with the officer, loudly saying that there were certain people at the event you couldnt talk about some stuff in front of. 4.56. Hours. The demo unit was pulling faces from the Minneappolis state drivers license database and used a Puerto Rican name and image for sampling purposes (Miguel Rafael Alfau-Aleman). Before I get into Urban Shield's specific judging criteria, the following overview will give a clearer picture of just how extensive Urban Shield's logistics/planning are. If we believe that not attending Urban Shield puts us at risk then we have to believe that the training of most of Berkeleys police force, as well as all the police forces in the Bay Area and the United States, is woefully inadequate. Our police officers and chief have told the mayor and council repeatedly that withdrawing the tactical team would put our first responders and community in harms way and further damage morale. - clicked stream data For the answer, I turned to ACSO Lt. Mark Gordillo, who is Urban Shield's tactical coordinator. Primary Care Doctor. The response of the Alameda County Sheriff employee from the public information office who was standing within earshot of the vendor making the comment was to reprimand me for making the vendor uncomfortable rather than reprimand the vendor for violating the ground rules for the event. Conduct exercise tactical debriefs. Copyright 2019. The police union has made a series of claims regarding the alleged poor working conditions of the BPD. 879 Northeast Main Street, Bldg B, Simpsonville, SC, 29681, United States (864) 881-8333 kelly@myurbanom.com. Nonprofit news. The lack of BPD officers on bikes and in neighborhoods is a direct result of decisions regarding priorities and approach. Since we were watching the exercise from a great distance, it was impossible to actually see what the CERT trainees were doing apart from going door to door in small groups and labeling the doors after they left, but we spent some time at the makeup booth where volunteers were assembling fake blood, broken bones and fake open wounds to put on the victim actors. Incident Commander (Exercise Director): Responsible for planning, coordinating, and overseeing. Urban Shield takes place in the Bay Area on the weekend of 9/11 each year, and is a war games training and weapons expo that involves international and local law enforcement agencies and emergency responders. Skydio: Find Out How US Drones Assist Law Enforcement Skydio: Find Out How US Drones Assist Law Enforcement Safety is paramount with participant safety taking priority over exercise events. Deploys scout/recon/surveillance team. Take ICE's involvement in Urban Shield. In six simultaneously released editorials, a series of debatable, and to my mind, incorrect, arguments were made in support of the BPDs participation in this militarized, unrealistic and disturbing wargame. Oakland Privacy will be sending in our recommendations. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 at the end of a five-hour meeting on Tuesday to accept most of a committee's recommendations to make sweeping changes to its "Urban Shield" . The logistics and preparation for an event of this complexity and . Threatening to quit or not to do the job you were hired to do, which for police officers has always included being subjected to public scrutiny and criticism, is unprofessional. is the founder of the R.J. O'Brien Group Ltd., a law enforcement training and consulting service that advises and trains a number of local, state, and federal SWAT teams. Lt. Gordillo's response made me realize Urban Shield's judging criteria is what all SWAT teams strive for in "real life" to be tactically proficient, competent, and be considered a "good" professional SWAT team. SWAT competitions give the teams an opportunity to compete against other tactical teams in events designed to test their competency and mettle. Please try again later. This location was being used for a CERT exercise. It appears that officers get trained BEFORE they go to the competition. Nowadays, it is a much more muted affair. SWAT. Urban OM acupuncture & apothecary. {{#label}}{{label}}: {{/label}}{{message}}. Communications checks. 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