New York, NY – The New York Police Department (NYPD), the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) took part in an active shooter exercise early Sunday at a Brooklyn high school to evaluate tactics and technologies for responding to and containing rapidly escalating shooting incidents.
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The exercise was organized around a scenario in which multiple active shooters with improvised explosive devices (IED) storm their way into the Leon M. Goldstein High School, which is co-located on the Kingsborough Community College campus.
““The exercise that we conducted today in Brooklyn allows the NYPD, its fellow first responders, and Department of Homeland Security to demonstrate and strengthen our active shooter response capabilities,” said Police Commissioner William J. Bratton. “We hope that these skills and equipment are never needed, but we know that we must be prepared to respond in a moment’s notice. This drill allows the department to test the coordination skills between our elite Emergency Service Unit, our newly formed Critical Response Command and Strategic Response as well as our precinct patrol personnel. Today’s training will help us be even more prepared.”
The technologies that were tested and evaluated during the exercise were:
• SOCET GXP – A geo-spatial intelligence tool that uses imagery from commercial, satellite and tactical sources to identify and analyze ground features.
• Mutualink – a technology that enables interoperability of voice, text and radio.
• Crowd Evacuation Software – modeling software that shows the time required to evacuate a facility and identifies potential issues that could arise during the evacuation as well as corrective actions for mitigating such issues.
• Unmanned Aerial Systems Software (UAS) – modeling software that allows the user to model threat vectors, launch points and potential distances that are possible during a UAS attack.
Picatinny Arsenal’s (ARDEC) Combating Terrorism Technology Evaluation Program provided technology support, evaluators and cameras to capture footage for post-exercise review and analysis.
The NYPD Counterterrorism Division deployed three Special Operations Units during the exercise including the Emergency Services Unit, the Critical Response Command, and the Strategic Response Group.
