A lot goes into a tactical team’s response to an active-shooter scenario or a bomb disaster. The San Francisco Bay Area Urban Shield exercise — now in its fourth year — continues to gain national and international recognition as a model for testing and evaluating enhanced regional preparedness across all disciplines of public safety and major disaster response.
The purpose of Urban Shield, one of the largest SWAT exercises/competitions in the United States, is to test various departments’ approaches to these types of situations. Just under 30 teams attended this year’s event in the Bay Area, including several from overseas, including Israel and Jordan.
Having personally witnessed a significant portion of the 48-hour continuous exercise — which was hosted by 19 agencies and held in more than two dozen locations throughout a 700 square mile swath of the Bay Area — I can say without equivocation that the planners achieved those five goals mentioned at the start. We’re proud to have had the opportunity to have had so much access to so many elements of Urban Shield 2010.
Check out the video below, as well as my continuting coverage here on Police1.
