by BECKY GOFF
Little Apple Post
Riley County Police Department partnered with Manhattan Fire Department, Riley County EMS and other law enforcement partners to participate in a joint training exercise.
The training scenario focused on streamlining the cooperation between agencies in the event of a large scale, active violence situation.
"Our role players, our volunteers really helped with that because as you saw, they're really good actors and besides the...the makeup and the moulage, their screams and everything like that make it so realistic that we've actually had observers tear up and some even cry because it's so realistic.” Riley County Police Department Lt. Tim Schuck says.
Media were invited to attend Tuesday's scenario at the Susan B Anthony Middle School, with additional training drills being held through the rest of the week.
“Unfortunately, there's a lot of events like...like we're exercising here occurring in the world today. Now we see in the news and that's...that's terribly unfortunate and I, like many members in the community that causes me some concern and some anxiety and so my message to the community would be, we are we are well rehearsed, well-practiced, because of exercises like this," Riley County EMS, assistant director, Josh Gering says. "So, I understand and sympathize with the feelings of anxiety and feelings of concern, but I hope they can. They can see this piece today and see us all out here working hard and they can take some modicum of safety and comfort knowing that we're out here doing these three days this week so that you know should...should the event ever arise. We will be ready to take good care of them.”
Crews ran through different scenarios, requiring them to make decisions on how to adjust their responses when presented with different incidents.
"The dedication of the first responders we have here, not only today but the next three days all the agencies we have outside agencies we have coming in just that dedication to the citizens of Manhattan. I think it reflects greatly on all the personnel that we have serving here." Manhattan Fire Department Battalion Chief Mark Whitehair says.
“I think I want to make sure folks know is that our training this week isn't in response to the situations that have happened recently in Texas and Chicago. This is something we've been doing since 2016. And so, we continue to train and will train next year. These dates were picked and planned. Well before it ends, the incidence and so on them to know we're always trained this way regardless of what happens.” Riley County Police Department, Interim Director, Kurt Moldrup says.
Riley County Police Department has posted additional information about the training times on their Facebook page which can be found here: