In the low-slung hills of Dublin, sheriff's deputies, Department of Defense researchers, and tech company representatives queue around a picnic table, heaping their paper plates with barbecued pork, chicken, and beef. They've convened for lunch in a dusty lot next to a hangar stocked with all-terrain vehicles, scuba suits, and propane tanks. Across the road, the slender windows of Santa Rita Jail glimmer in the heat.
It's Day One of the eighth annual Urban Shield, a two-day terrorism response exercise hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff's Department and funded by a Department of Homeland Security grant, in which teams of law enforcement officers from the Bay Area and beyond are put through their paces in 31 scenarios at various locations. The event has, perhaps not surprisingly, incited debate about the militarization of local police. On the eve of the exercise, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan announced on her Facebook page that the event, headquartered in Oakland, will not be held there again next year after what she called "community concerns" about "the relationship between our officers and community members."
But, on the Sheriff Department's ranch-like campus in Dublin, "police militarization" is a buzzword that elicits scoffs from deputies, who say the term is bandied about when politicians and journalists miss the point of the Urban Shield exercise.
"It's about all the agencies working together," says Paul Hess, the department's emergency services supervisor, who raises the subject of militarization unprompted. "Really what we're building is a camaraderie among Bay Area agencies."
"I find it absolutely astonishing that the mayor who, for the last four years, has been saying Oakland needs more police officers, when she gets them, she doesn't want them," ACSO spokesman Sgt. J.D. Nelson says. "But, that said, if she doesn't want us, we'll gladly go somewhere else."
Nelson also nodded to the recent events in Ferguson, Mo., that have drawn heightened attention to police conduct. "Are you to tell me that Jean Quan looked at the footage from Ferguson and said, 'Boy, those guys sure need less training?'" he asks. "I would think that everybody would look at that and say they need more training."
Quan's disapproval doesn't seem to matter much — not around the picnic tables, not at the obstacle course where SWAT officers are scaling ropes and belly-crawling through white sand to shouts of encouragement from female deputies, and not beyond the ridge, where a burst of gunfire and the theatrical screams of volunteers rise from the "sovereign citizen eviction" scenario. ("Sovereign citizens" is the FBI's term for individuals who defy government authority, often violently.) Although the campus is just minutes from a gated housing community, the civilian world feels miles away.
At Candlestick Park, another Urban Shield site, San Francisco police officer Bryan Woo asks observers not to post pictures of the hostage rescue scenario on social media "because we don't want the protesters to come."
In addition to the SWAT teams — which compete not only for the highest score at Urban Shield but also free swag, like a rifle from event vendor Mile High Shooting Accessories — police agencies also get to design and run their own scenarios. (With the exception of teams from South Korea, Singapore, and Texas, Urban Shield is composed entirely of Bay Area police forces.)
SFPD Sgt. Stephen Jonas, the designer of the Candlestick hostage rescue, says he chose to base his scenario on the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 hostages were slain. To Jonas, the purpose of Urban Shield is "to identify gaps and pick areas that need improvement." The hostage scenario tests communication and command, as the team must split in two to effectively seize control of a stadium VIP suite. Waiting for them inside are volunteers posing as hostages and terrorists, the latter armed with guns that fire colored cartridges similar to those used in paintball.
"By the end of the weekend, you look like you just went through a finger-painting class," Jonas says with a half-smile.
Quan isn't the event's only detractor. The protesters have indeed come, assembling outside the Oakland Marriott — where Urban Shield's vendor show is held — with banners depicting the victims of police shootings. For Cyndi Mitchell, who joined a Friday rally against the event, the thread binding SWAT scenarios to the deaths of young Bay Area men is clear: She fears an unchecked police force trained to kill (and many of the training exercises do feature so-called "green light scenarios," in which deadly force is used to stop a threat) and has advocated for more thorough drug testing of officers. Mitchell's brother, 23-year-old Mario Romero, was killed by Vallejo police in 2012. Of Urban Shield, she says, "They need to talk about how to protect rather than how to arm."
The tension between protection and aggression is stark at the vendor show, where insurance providers, weapons manufacturers, medical supply companies, and others present their wares to an audience of uniformed men (Berkeley's Urban Shield team has a female member, but the teams are overwhelmingly male).
James Lux, a researcher from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who sports a graying ponytail, presents a project called FINDER (Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response) to the Sunnyvale team. The apparatus, enclosed in a heavy-duty Pelican case, uses radar to scan through up to 30 feet of rubble for the tiny movements of heartbeats and breaths. It can quickly detect signs of life after an earthquake and show first responders where to search.
But the Sunnyvale police team is excited by FINDER's potential applications in a SWAT scenario, and the officers latch on to the idea of using the tool to search buildings for suspected criminals. There's a back-and-forth between Lux and the team about whether it can look through walls or rubble — the answer is yes to both, really, but Lux keeps highlighting FINDER's search-and-rescue uses.
"I'm not sure if the ACLU will like this technology, but it might save my life," one officer remarks. (The American Civil Liberties Union would probably not like this technology. The organization filed an amicus brief supporting Danny Lee Kyllo in his landmark 2001 case against the United States, in which the Supreme Court ruled that using thermal imaging to look through walls for marijuana grow operations required a warrant.)
But that's Urban Shield: It doesn't matter whether you like it or not. Quan's objection has little sway over a multicity event. And although the Sheriff's Department will move on next year — Pleasanton is a possible venue — Urban Shield exercises will likely continue in Oakland and in San Francisco. The things officers learn and the gear they use will reach further than that.
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