Distributors like Safariland displayed impressive piles of assault weapons. BPD officers are some of the best-compensated officers in the region with excellent benefits. 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. 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. Urban Shield judging begins with extensive evaluator briefings with instructions outlining the rules and judging criteria (particularly important for exercise and tactical evaluators). So we have SWAT schools, POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training), standardized SWAT schools that people go to. 879 Northeast Main Street, Bldg B, Simpsonville, SC, 29681, United States (864) 881-8333 kelly@myurbanom.com. The secure and easy all-access connection to your content. Can you imagine life without Berkeleyside? . received Urban Shield training. And virtually every tactical team I know wonders how they compare with other teams. The city has not held a city-wide earthquake drill in years, to a large extent because they have been distracted by Urban Shield. Urban Shield is NOT about Training Officers, https://www.facebook.com/cschwartz72/videos/10156416467608810/. How do Urban Shield scenarios that emphasize well trained and heavily armed terrorists prepare the police for the dangers we actually face? In this case, they consisted of a dilapidated building and the participants were going door to door tending to actors who were portraying earthquake victims. Love podcasts or audiobooks? | TEST SCORES: What they show | HOLIDAY LIGHTS: Share your pics! BPD has not conducted a survey to determine why officers have left or retired. 14.99. Family Doctors. 00:00. It appears that officers get trained BEFORE they go to the competition. The BFD is highly trained and responded well in this instance. The criminals are bolder. See above the BPDs union is currently in heated contract negotiations. 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 . 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. The only way to get full points in the competition is through full escalation of force. {{#label}}{{label}}: {{/label}}{{message}}. 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. The proposal before the City Council is to continue participating in the aspects of Urban Shield that prepare for mass care and sheltering operations. On September 7th and 8th, I attended the Bay Area's police militarization expo, Urban Shield.Urban Shield is a competition for the Bay Area's SWAT teams, fire departments, and hazmat and emergency operations teams and a law enforcement equipment expo, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security's UASI program as a counter-terrorism exercise. 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. 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. Planning: Sound tactical and contingency plans. Exhibits command presence/self-confidence. The group that included task force members, City of Alameda staff and some press was taken to four exercise locations on Saturday. 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. Guns are proliferating in our society. The exercise was apocalyptic, meaning that the hazardous materials were stolen without protective equipment. Mask your identity and add a privacy layer to any connection - Public or Secured Help keep our community-funded reporting strong in 2023 by donating to our end-of-year fundraising campaign. We share this web browsing data in anaggregated, anonymized format with our affiliated companies and business partners for commercial use. 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. In active shooter situations there is no time to assemble the SRT team. This is window dressing. The following is an overview checklist of the Urban Shield tactical judging criteria: Leadership: Solicits input from team. There are specific protocols and planning that go into this. Learn on the go with our new app. Wed 9am - 7pm. It will not affect the BFD. 30.00. Donate to Berkeleysideand support independent local journalism. The federally-funded program is . Responsible for overall planning and management of the scenario during the 48-hour duration. November 3, 2010 Deploys sniper/observer team. Despite the massive expenditure of tax dollars, the Urban Shield event is closed to the public with only a few modes of entry. Incident Commander (Exercise Director): Responsible for planning, coordinating, and overseeing. Deploys scout/recon/surveillance team. 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. 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. 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. Mon 9am - 7pm. This includes the key positions that make it all work to coordinated perfection. 48 minutes into the video. 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. 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. 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. This is Urban Shield's most valuable contribution to law enforcement and the society we serve. The centerpiece of Urban Shield is a two-day SWAT team competition that requires teams to complete dozens of high-fidelity, high-realism missions. Yes, I want to donate to support Berkeleyside. Crime in Berkeley is historically way down, over 35% of police activity is directly related to homelessness. And because we believe in information equality, we keep our independent nonprofit reporting free for everyone to read. + P&P. Pixi Beauty Overnight Glow Serum 10% Glycolic Acid Exfoliating Soothing Gel 30ml. Any (neutral) professional involved in these types of events will clearly state that they have little, if any, benefit as training. CERT, the community emergency response team, trains members of the community to perform basic disaster response and certifies them as civilian responders. The police are required to act in almost any such incident especially in terms of crowd control and minimizing crimes of opportunity. Nika Megino , Patch Staff Posted Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 6:22 pm PT | Updated Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 7:00 pm PT These are not trainings, they are competitions. For the answer, I turned to ACSO Lt. Mark Gordillo, who is Urban Shield's tactical coordinator. 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. Urban Shield is a comprehensive all-hazards training program for police, fire, hazmat, EMS and emergency management. 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. 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. 15% VITAMIN E SERUM NIGHT MASK for Face and Neck Liq Ce Anti-Aging Firming 30ml. 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. Everyone involved with Urban Shield is responsible for safety. Yoga Store Urban OM | Website managed by . Bahasa Indonesia, Deutsch, English, Franais, Nederlands, Trke, espaol, portugus (Brasil), , (), . 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. Primary Care Doctor. ), 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? 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. Privacy Policy Intelligence Gathering: Debriefs victims and witnesses. Take ICE's involvement 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 . 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 . Change your IP in Public Hotspots The city is having difficulty filling sworn officer positions and may be forced to lower its standards for employment in order to attract applicants. 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. Cooperation. 72 mi. Utilizes other resources (such as blueprints and employees). 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 exercise, which focused on a diplomatic entourage, set off simunition bombs and was captured on a videotape put out by the Alameda County Sheriffs department. | WE'RE HIRING: Cover public safety. 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). 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. These lessons and mistakes made in training save lives in the "real world.". 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. Furthermore, there is nothing in the scenario described that necessitated Urban Shield as a venue. 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. Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. Yesterday morning I found out that Berkeleyside decided to publish seven opinion pieces on the issue in support of BPDs participation in Urban Shield. 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. Video from Berkeley Police Review Commission meeting 6/13/18. 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. Every scenario is based on a real-world event. Owners Alysia and Dennis Kunz have always had a desire to work together and own their . Hide your IP address and better hide your Digital Fingerprints 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. Regional Participation in Urban Shield SWAT competition, Fire, and CERT scenarios. Demonstrates flexibility. This turned out to be Pepperball, which are pepper spray projectiles shot from guns. This is primarily a fire department issue. 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). You saw only a small part of what was going on. For every police review commissioner who supports Urban Shield participation, there are two who do not. Breach/secondary breach points. 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. Im sure that some people reading this will detect a bit of exasperation. Our reporters deliver high-impact, trustworthy local news about Berkeley each and every day. Nonprofit news. Home. If you are like everyone else, then you probably use public Wi-Fi quite frequently. 20.88. 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. The vendor comments seemed to indicate the implementation of the principles at the event had been more along the lines of dont get caught. This location was being used for a CERT exercise. The streets are meaner. 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. The FBI and our own BPD have made this abundantly clear. The lack of BPD officers on bikes and in neighborhoods is a direct result of decisions regarding priorities and approach. Emphasis on team at all levels. It could have to do with the generous retirement packages. 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. Simpsonville. Just for the record I am a 24+ year resident of Berkeley. 14.99. Fri 11am - 7pm. Timing/coordination. The Time to Fight for People's Park is Now! Tue 9am - 7pm. Get Berkeleyside's free newsletter. Wi-Fi surfing protection & auto caching and history cleaner. Urban Shield "training" is really the opportunity to DEMONSTRATE their training. 2022 POLICE Magazine. There is no systematic training regimen to prepare first responders for these types of situations and outside of a small number of speciality units no police force in the country trains for these types of deployments. 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. The police union has made a series of claims regarding the alleged poor working conditions of the BPD. The venues are spread across 700 square miles of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Sacramento SWAT team ended up disabling the perpetrators with Pepperball shots. 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. Medical support is readily available from mobile medical (ALS/BLS) units and medical checkpoints. We are, in fact, living through one of the lowest crime rates in over 30 years. The logistics and preparation for an event of this complexity and . Killing the perpetrators was described as academic since they had already been exposed to lethal levels of radioactivity. Site Commanders (Controllers): Set up and operate their related scenario. Liaisons: Assigned to each tactical team, responsible to ensure teams arrive on time and safely, and assists with logistics, briefings. 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. 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. 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" . Communications checks. Even if Berkeley lowers its standards and there has been zero evidence other than hearsay this has nothing to do with Urban Shield. In 2009, Oakland Police Department's SWAT team won the Urban Shield competition. Executive Director, Media Alliance (www.media-alliance.org) and co-coordinator, Oakland Privacy (www.oaklandprivacy.org). You can follow the task forces progress here. 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. 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. 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. Newark Editor , Patch Staff Posted Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 8:03 pm PT | Updated Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 8:05 pm PT Rehearsal. Free for all, funded by readers. Terrorists had stolen radioactive material from a laboratory and were making and deploying a bomb. In a major disaster the net effect of any (debatable) benefit those officers will have is going to be negligible to non-existent. Standardized California training classes. (Check approx. The 48-hour SWAT competition and emergency operations exercise organized by the Alameda County (CA) Sheriff's Office was some of the best first-responder training available, and it was killed by Northern California's anti-police activists. Equipment assignments. 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. Killing Urban Shield. The day began with a meetup at the one public facing Urban Shield event, a 2017 addition called the Urban Shield community fair. What I saw at Urban Shield was starkly different from what I had been prepared to see based on characterizations of the program. 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. The size of the force is now at a historic low. 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. Yet, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) has succeeded in improving Urban Shield each of the four years of its existence. shoot-house. Weve been providing Berkeley with compelling, trustworthy local news for 13 years. Moreover, the Urban Shield competition and expo don't reflect our values as a community. Noise/light discipline/equipment. Maintains control. - clicked stream data I am also a team lead for a Search and Rescue team and have participated in multiple mass casualty training scenarios. 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. 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. team competi. 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. Morale. If BPDs officers were so fed up they would already have left. Police departments all over the Bay Area are below their peaks. In addition, most disaster scenarios involve intense action on the part of first responders that lasts for long periods (days, at least). Compromise procedures. The premise was a dirty bomb. Some scenarios, due to community pushback, like this one, have been altered. Use of cover and concealment. Download Urban Shield here with just one click and you are ready to go! The stuff being the 12 Principles which had nixed surveillance methods and crowd control techniques from the event and expo. by Robert O'Brien Daniel Robinson is a resident of Berkeley and a citizen first responder. 15% VITAMIN E SERUM NIGHT MASK for Face and Neck Liq Ce Anti-Aging Firming 30ml. Central Contra Costa County SWAT carried out the exercise. South Carolina. 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. Urban Shield is a rare opportunity for "good" tactical teams to become even better teams learn their strengths and weaknesses. 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. Spending time at Urban Shield diminishes attention that should be better spent. But appearances do not tell the whole tale. First responders have had to deal with multi-day events for a long, long time. 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. Urban OM acupuncture & apothecary. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office (ACSO) will host Urban Shield 2018, a planned training exercise involving local, national, and international first responder agencies. 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. Control checkpoints. All Rights Reserved. How much crowd control and crimes of opportunity have we seen in a major earthquake or during a wildfire? The City Council will consider pulling BPD out of Urban Shield SWAT competition, for this year only. For the 29 SWAT teams, Urban Shield doubles as a competition one I describe as a challenging, real-world simulation "gruelathon.". 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. Video from Berkeley Police Review Commission meeting 6/13/18. So to mark this historic occasion, I decided to attend. The competition pitted 32 tactical teams throughout the nation against one another. The scenarios participated in are extremely unrealistic and irrelevant to the job that we hire the police to perform in Berkeley. Urban Shield. Our police are highly compensated and work in a relatively low crime and stress situation. Attitude. 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