NYPD gets training from feds for active shooters on subway
Several people were “shot” on a subway platform Thursday afternoon – in a scenario that was part of new active-shooter training for NYPD cops amid a slew of transit violence in the Big Apple in recent months.
“This four-day training is new,” said Inspector Raymond Porteus, commanding officer of the NYPD’s Special Operations Division. “It’s specific training on an active shooter in a subway.”
About a dozen NYPD members received the training given by the US Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers at the FDNY’s academy on Randall’s Island.
Porteus said there are plans to expand the program to reach more cops later this year.
“Active shooters are a thing now. As you saw April 12, we had an active-shooter incident down in Brooklyn,” Porteus said. “We had this training planned ahead of this. … We’re always honing our skills.”
The training on Randall’s Island went through three active-shooter scenarios.
In one, a gunman fired a weapon at people on a train. In a second, the shooter was on the platform firing on straphangers. And in a third, he was involved in a domestic dispute on the subway and stabbed a woman repeatedly throughout her body.
In all three, cops fired on the shooter and stopped him.
“We did do massive amounts of research on your April shooting,” CJ Taylor of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, told reporters. “All the way back to the cannisters [the suspect] used to smoke up the train and basically how [he] jumped train to train to escape.”
In the platform scenario, the shooter, played by Sgt. John Palermo of the Transit Bureau, “fired” on male and female actors before cops arrived and shot him. The officers then handcuffed the shooter and tended to the patients, carrying one injured man out.
“As soon as they stopped the killing, we secured the suspect,” Taylor said. “Then they went and transitioned to putting tourniquets on.”
The NYPD also tried to create a realistic environment by blasting crowd noise that included blood-curdling screams. They also pumped in smoke to make the scene more realistic.
“We want the officers to feel a real-life environment,” Taylor said. “That’s what this was today. It’s important to get the officers used to it.”
Frank James shot 10 people on a northbound N train in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, around 8:30 a.m. on April 12. James, who was wearing a gas mask, threw out smoke grenades during his unhinged attack that sent injured men and women scurrying onto the subway platform.
In another horrific incident, Goldman Sachs executive Daniel Enriquez was killed in a random shooting on a subway in Brooklyn on May 22.
