Page 23 - AUCSO Newsletter 5_Neat

Staffordshire University Security & Staffordshire

Police run joint exercise on marauding terror attack.

On Wednesday 8th June, Staffordshire University ran a joint simulation exercise with Staffordshire
Police to test the ability of their security team to respond to a major incident based around the
aftermath of a marauding terror attack. The exercise was designed to maximise the participation of
security officers in a way that reflected the realistic deployment to an incident in pairs, by repeating
and running through the scenario four times over the course of one day. This ensured a tight focus
on the main aims of the exercise. The sequence of events was designed to mirror what would happen
in reality, with security officers attending initially and police officers arriving some minutes
afterwards. Police officer involvement was restricted to unarmed response officers and PCSOs. Live
‘casualties’ from the student body were utilised as actors, to provide a test for first-aid as well as
acting as a distraction to officers to put them under pressure.

The main areas of
focus for the
security teams were
initial assessment of
the scene,
communication
with the control
room and
participants,
control of the
environment, co-ordination with police responders, and decision-making under pressure. A hot
debrief with participants was undertaken after each run-through of the exercise, and this will be
followed up with a more comprehensive capture and report of lessons learned, which will inform
ongoing training for the team.

Staffordshire University’s Head of Campus Security Tom Callow, said “We see these types of
simulation exercises as vital to ensure that our officers are prepared and ready to deal with the initial
stages of major incidents, and that they are equipped to pass information clearly and concisely to
emergency services who subsequently arrive on the scene. It was great to have had the opportunity
to work with Staffordshire Police’s Tactical Planning Unit, as well as one of the CTSA’s for the West-
Midlands region who was instrumental in bringing the exercise to life. It also provided an excellent
opportunity for our newly recruited CONTEST Agenda Protect Specialist, Simon Marsh, to begin
to demonstrate the value that such a role can add. Simon did a great job in designing, preparing for,
and running the exercise at very short notice, and this will be the first of a regular programme of
operational level simulations for our security teams”

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