A drone buzzed in the sky over Simonds High school this morning as tactical officers, both inside the building and outside in the woods, responded to a simulated school-shooting and hostage-taking.
It’s all part of of a joint-forces training exercise underway today potentially involving upwards of 100 personnel across the province, which we’re told is the culmination of a three-year project between the feds and the province to create a system for multiple agencies to deal with a critical incident.
“The risks here to the citizens of New Brunswick are probably far, far less than other areas of the world,” says Saint John police chief John Bates. “But…dark days can descend at any time so we want to make sure that we’re ready.”
Chief Bates says he went into scenario without any sort of briefing beforehand — and that was of course, by design.
“Part of the scenario itself is to make it as realistic as possible, we didn’t know what we were going to be encountering…I mean, if we’re going to test our capabilities and our capacities we shouldn’t know in advance what it is we’re going to be dealing with so that the scenario itself is as realistic as possible,” says Bates.
Staff sergeant Jim Fleming says some students from law studies at the high school volunteered to be actors in the exercise.
“What they’ve done, is some of those people…some have fled the building so we’ve had to look after them, some have run into broom closets, and gone into washrooms and barricaded themselves, and other ones, in this case, the simulation is they were actually taken hostage,” says Fleming.
The exercise is happening today until 4pm.
