ESTEVAN — Approximately 30 members of the Estevan Police Service, Weyburn Police Service and the Canadian Pacific Railway Police were involved in training on the CP Rail grounds on Thursday.
Police Chief Rich Lowen said even though the location was on CP Rail property and CP police were involved, the scenario wasn’t directly related to trains. Rather, the situation dealt with armed and barricaded people who had a weapon, and whether other individuals were in danger.
The incident had been planned for a while, and was not in response to recent incidents. Lowen said it’s something police plan to do regularly.
“The more we train, the better we get, and it’s just something we have to be ready for at all times,” said Lowen, who would like to see these scenario training sessions happen at least twice a year.
He wants to have one more training exercise in another location before the first snowfall. If not, Lowen hopes it can occur in the early spring of 2023.
The training occurred on the CP property just north of Sixth Street, in what Lowen called an isolated area.
“We didn’t want to disrupt anything. We wanted to make sure we had a large area to work with, so it was beneficial for us and CP Rail,” said Lowen.
Lowen described it as an exercise to try to do things better as they move through different police responses where tactical units are required. The joint tactical support team, uniformed members and emergency negotiators were involved. The bylaw officer was an actor in responding to the emergency.
In the office, the EPS had an incident command centre set up. Civilian personnel were included.
“We have training for our leadership to try and control those situations and all those aspects that go around it as well,” said Lowen.
Scenario training like this allows the EPS to learn about its equipment, its communication skills, and how they work with other agencies to ensure they have the communication going.
The different policing agencies will debrief and go through what they can do better next time. If there were problems with equipment, they will be identified.
“It just gives everybody a good understanding of how all the different roles within a response like that work together, and then we sit together and talk about it as a team so that they understand how things are progressing when we have an emergency like that,” said Lowen.
