Realistic situations with perpetrators and victims
“We have to practice lifelike; with actors.” Team leader Ferry paints a picture of what the situation looks like. “That looks very realistic. You hear screams and see bleeding.” Although the scenario takes place in a school, the victims are played by adults. “You don’t want to expose small children to this.”
“People might hear some bangs from outside, because we do shoot blanks.” During the training, officers work with practice weapons and shoot blanks. “There really is a kind of car wash, where everything is exchanged.”
Professional organizations are called in to help the perpetrators. “These are not people we just pick off the street.” In order to practice as realistically as possible, Lizette believes it is important that the opponents know how the process works. “We need people who really stick to the scenario we have prepared.”
You have no control over that in a real situation, do you? “That’s right,” the DSI advisor admits. “But to achieve the training goals, we try to control the scenarios a bit. It’s really about collaboration between specialist services, but also being able to rely on each other.”
German soldier shot by police officers
During a similar training in Germany, earlier this week a participating soldier was shot at by police officers. The local police knew nothing about a military exercise and hunted the soldier after residents reported that an armed man was walking through the street.
The chance that something like this would happen in Uithoorn was small, according to Lizette: “We really try to announce it well with banners, flags and a large text cart.” The police do their best to create as little nuisance as possible. “We keep it real in the school, so we can go a bit further with counterplay.”
Some spectators, who hoped for spectacular images, have to stay behind blue screens and can indeed see little of the exercise. “It’s all a storm in a teacup,” says one disappointed.