[legion]

Got a call last night around 6:00 from a friend asking if I would be interested in helping the Bloomington SWAT with their training today. Of course I said yes.

I'm still amped on adrenaline as I type, we finished up two hours ago.

The Bloomington Police wanted to use an abandoned sorority house for their training. It just so happens that my coworker's father owns the house in question. My coworker's husband (also a friend of mine) set it all up, and was told at the last minute to invite friends--hence my invitation.

We ran two basic scenarios: one was a serving a search warrant on a drug house, one was a hostage situation. They ran each scenario twice. There was a debriefing after each run. Simunition was used. I wore a paintball mask, a protective vest, gloves and long sleeves/jeans.

The first run (search warrant), I hid in one of the bedrooms (there are 20+ bedrooms in the house). I just stood quietly in the corner until my room was cleared, then I complied immediately.

The second run (search warrant), I hid in another bedroom and pretended to be asleep. I decided that after 5 minutes of full auto fire that it woke me up. I walked to the doorway where I could see two SWAT members facing the other direction and see two more muzzles pointed towards a bedroom to my left. I stood there a good 30-45 seconds before anyone noticed me, then when I was noticed I ran back into the bedroom. I gave them a hard time, acquiescing grudgingly. I made them cuff me and drag me down the hall. (Even though I know I would immediately follow all commands in real life, I was instructed that it was okay to be as difficult as I wanted, so as to give them more realistic practice.)

The third run (hostage situation), I played a hostage. I was trapped in another bedroom with one of the captors and 7 other "hostages". (Cardboard cutout targets.) The guy running the training played my captor. When the SWAT team got to the door, he started "executing" hostages, and when they opened the door, I rushed them immediately screaming. (I was supposed to be fleeing for my life having witnessed other hostages get executed.) To their credit, they didn't shoot me, and in the span of 2 seconds I was whisked out of the way, handcuffed, and the captor was "dead". Then I was interrogated for the layout and if there any other captors or captives.

The fourth run (hostage situation), I played a captor. Me and one of my friends had taken a kindergarten hostage. We barricaded ourselves in the dining room and guarded both entrances to the room. The SWAT breached all four doors to the house simultaneously. I got of 5 shots, but missed with all (maybe 20-25 yards away), and was quickly lit up with about 5 hits. I screamed: "I'm hit!" and played dead. The team engaging my partner thought it was him screaming, and stopped engaging him, allowing him to get a hit on one of the SWAT members.

Then we broke for lunch. The afternoon was supposed to be a "free for all" where we tried to defend the house against SWAT, but they got a real call and had to leave.

The trainer allowed us to use the Simunition on each other for about an hour. (It was basically like playing paintball indoors.) Then we cleaned up and got all the gear loaded.

I hope to get invited back for their next training day!