Recent local training exercises are helping to ensure police officers are more prepared than ever to protect the public and respond to critical incidents.
Seven officers with the Chatham-Kent, LaSalle and Strathroy police services conducted Immediate Rapid Deployment training exercises from Monday to Friday last week at the former George P. Vanier Catholic School on Cecile Avenue in Chatham.
“Any time we do police training, the type of training we do is super important for officer development. It’s also a perishable skill, and that’s why it’s mandated that we have to do resertifications every year,” said Jay Williams, the training and development sergeant with the Chatham-Kent Police Service. “Police training is in more demand than it ever has been with the new police service CSPA [Community Safety and Policing Act] and our officers are better trained than they’ve ever been.”
The training, which is overseen by the Ontario Police College, prepares officers to respond effectively to critical incidents, such as an active threat or an active shooter.
Williams said utilizing the vacant school building is very beneficial for the officers being trained.
“It gives us a realistic training environment and better prepares our officers to deal with those types of situations,” he said.
While he could not speak on the specifics of the training exercises, Williams said the seven officers who participated were provided with the standardized knowledge needed to instruct other officers to respond to critical incidents.
“We train for high-risk, low-frequency; so, isolated events that don’t happen very often, but when they do, they’re very tragic,” he said. “We want to make sure that our officers are ready to deal with whatever situation they have to encounter.”
Access to George P. Vanier School was permitted through a partnership between the St. Clair Catholic District School Board and the Chatham-Kent Police Service.
