Police and Fire Units To Train at Spotsylvania Towne Centre

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The Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office will conduct an “active shooter” training exercise at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Spotsylvania Towne Centre.

In the exercise, Spotsylvania sheriff’s deputies will work with law enforcement officers and deputies from the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office, Fredericksburg Police Department and Germana Community College, and with members of the Spotsylvania Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Management.

The training event will consist of a simulation exercise, wherein the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office will respond to an active shooter event at the shopping mall. Actors will portray victims, alarmed shoppers, business owners and suspects.

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“This is a large-scale exercise, involving multiple agencies from several surrounding jurisdictions,” Sheriff Harris said. “We conduct this training to gauge the effectiveness of incident management training and law enforcement preparedness.”

Law enforcement authorities will conduct and monitor the exercise to evaluate the decision-making process, disaster response procedures and inter-agency coordination and communication.

“We hope an event like this never occurs to our citizens; however, we continue to train and prepare for a worst-case scenario,” Harris said. “We remain ready and ensure that our law enforcement and emergency management professionals can demonstrate their readiness capabilities in response to this or any other type of unlawful act against our citizens.”

The Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office wants to make the surrounding neighborhoods aware of the upcoming training event so that no one will be surprised or alarmed at the sight of numerous fire, police and sheriff’s vehicles in and around the Towne Centre on Sunday night.