LITTLE CURRENT—Members of four regional police services gathered at the Manitoulin Hotel and Conference Centre last week for a tactical unit seminar.
“We are doing a seminar with the four police services that work in our communities, the OPP and Anishinaabek Police, UCCM and Wiikwemkoong Tribal Police,” said Wiikwemkoong Acting Police Chief Jason Spooner. “We’re doing the training on critical incident response. We have guest presenters that are here from Orillia on the Tactics and Rescue Unit as well as the Emergency Response Team from the OPP. They’re just working together with all the services, trying to streamline our training and our responses to emergency situations.”
Some 25 police officers from the four services were gathered in the conference rooms seeking to up their game when it comes to best practices when it comes to emergency situations, but also building lines of communication.
“From our point of view, Wiikwemkoong spearheaded this, but ultimately, any opportunity for interagency change is only a benefit to our organization, to their organization and to the public at large,” said Manitoulin OPP Detachment Commander Robert Walsh. “This specific opportunity is to have the Tactical Rescue Unit come in to speak to us. Our organizations interact on a very regular basis in that regard and if we can do anything to break down barriers, sort out miscommunications and further the understanding of what perhaps our unit needs versus what’s already in play on the field it’s a win-win.”
The educational component to the gathering was central to the focus, however.
“For every sort of major critical incident. There are four sets of principles that need to be followed regardless of what police force you’re a part of,” noted Commander Walsh. “If you can sort out those guidelines, put them into play before the higher level, technical officers arrive, oftentimes you can resolve the issue prior to or you can certainly set them up for success when they hit the ground. So that’s really what this is all about, to make sure that our officers are all on the same page when it comes to a higher-level series.”
“There are four services here and we’re all working in the same area,” said UCCM Anishnaabe Police Chief James Killeen. “I’ve been here for three years, and I’ve been involved in numerous critical incidents and search warrants. We rely heavily on the OPP. They have the units that we don’t have that are required for these types of situations. We want to make sure that everyone has the same training; everyone understands the complexities of an incident like this and what is required to do that job effectively and to create a situation that’s safe for all our communities–we want to make sure that everybody is learning the same information and responding in the same fashion for similar situations.”
