Canton Police Join Local SWAT Teams for Terrorist Attack Training

officers joined forces with departments from across the Bay State, including the South Shore, Cape Cod and Boston, and participated in a terror attack training program this week. Officers practiced Multiple Attack Counter Terror Action Capabilities on Thursday in Weymouth. The Los Angeles Police Department ran the large-scale attack drill.

SWAT teams drawn from 150 communities, including Canton, Braintree, Milton and towns on Martha's Vineyard, practiced responding to a Mumbai-style terrorist attack at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station, fending off bad guys equipped with non-lethal grenades and assault rifles who had taken hostages in unused units at the station’s Coast Guard family housing area.

The training has been going on for the past three weeks, Braintree Deputy Police Chief Russell Jenkins said, with officers practicing different aspects of the larger response. It was put on by members of the Los Angeles Police Department, who belong to a private group called LEAD Consultants, and paid for in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“It’s unfortunate, but the need is there for this type of training,” Jenkins said. “The guys did a good job.”

SWAT officers worked off a script and timeline that provided them with an initial “shots fired” call and then built up into a full-scale attack requiring several large SWAT vehicles coming on scene in regular intervals, dozens of combat-ready officers raiding the various housing units and at least two snipers in the field behind the dwellings.

The training on Thursday also helped officers learn how to communicate over multiple radio channels, “A huge feat,” Jenkins said. More scenarios were set to be played out Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

“This isn’t just for the Armageddon-type event,” Jenkins said. “We have to be prepared.”