Homeland Security

Exercise Design and Facilitation

Regular testing of operational capabilities is key to identifying gaps or needs and ensuring smooth responses when needed.

SRPEDD's Homeland Security Department assists public safety personnel from across the SRPEDD region.

Its role is to help these agencies coordinate internal and external responses to real world situations or disasters. These situations can include active shooter responses, severe weather events, or large-scale medical emergencies.

Exercise Funding

SRPEDD has a limited supply of matching funds for municipal exercises with small to medium scopes. Good candidates might include a whole-community, entry-level cybersecurity exercise, exercising a continuity of operations (COOP) plan, or a tabletop exercise detailing a public safety Active Shooter/Hostile Event response.

Please fill out this interest form as a first step and someone will reach out to you.

Examples

Bridgewater State University Active Shooter Table Top Exercise

In order to help identify strengths, and areas for improvement in their regional active shooter response plan, Bridgewater State University asked SRPEDD to help design and facilitate an Active Shooter Exercise.

The first step was to complete a Tabletop Exercise, with participants from area and state police, fire, and EMS departments to walk through some active shooter scenarios.

An After-Action Report detailing the exercise and it's findings can be found here.

Active Shooter Tabletop Exercise at Bridgewater State University

SRPEDD, partnering with local law enforcement and fire services personnel, designed and facilitated an Active Shooter Tabletop Exercise for Bridgewater State University.

Statewide Full-Scale Search and Rescue Exercise

On October 4^th, 2023, more than two hundred and fifty personnel across at least fourteen state and regional law enforcement, technical rescue, and civilian search and rescue teams came together for a simulated missing persons search in Rutland, Massachusetts. The scenario was two pairs of missing individuals lost in the woods overnight, with search teams coming on scene in the morning. The potential search area covered just over three-square miles of trails and heavy woodland and the subjects ranged from hidden/evasive behaviors to actively responding to searcher callouts. Search teams consisted mostly of search and rescue technicians on foot but were supplemented by all-terrain vehicles, certified live-find dogs, and horses. While there were struggles with incident command, communications, and other incident management functions, at the conclusion of four hours of exercise play, two missing persons were found, and teams were closing in on the remaining two individuals. One of the unwritten objectives of this exercise was to bring together the combined search and rescue teams within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a large-scale search before a real-world emergency does it for us. Relationships and joint capabilities forged during the exercise between teams will undoubtedly pay dividends at future real-world incidents and will greatly enhance search and rescue capabilities within the Commonwealth. The search and rescue community of Massachusetts should look at this exercise as a standout success and take guidance from this AAR-IP for future training, equipment purchases, and more joint exercises.

The After Action Review-Improvement Plan can be found here.

A group of search and rescue team professionals stand in a field during a briefing

Search and Rescue teams from across the Commonwealth are briefed prior to the start of the exercise.