Last night I went to watch a Madison PD training exercise, bitterly disappointed at the thought that I wouldn’t get to be a hostage. Little did I know!
I got there around 6:15 and hung around where the officer I’d talked to, Sgt Paulsen, told me to wait. After about 20 minutes with no one else showing up, I wandered around a bit and found where the SWAT team was getting set up. Sgt Paulsen came over and introduced himself and asked me to park around the corner and wait for him. A few minutes later he came up but without the stylish orange vest for me that I was expecting. He asked if, instead of watching, I wanted to be in the scenario. Hell yes!
After patting me down to be sure I had no live rounds (I didn’t, but the frisking was giving me a suspicious package) he sent me into my BF’s friend’s building and asked me to wait for his call on my cell phone. I settled in with my Patty Hearst autobiography and waited. Suddenly, an explosion! I went to the window and saw some officers crouched behind some vehicles in the nearby lot. Just then my phone rang. It was Sgt Paulsen telling me to get away from the window. If the officers saw me they would have to react to me outside the scenario. I sat back down and waited.
About an hour goes by. I had just read the story of how Patty robbed the Hibernia Bank when my phone rang again. It was a different officer calling. “Hey Otto, are you ready to get shot?” Boy, was I!
She told me to head out the back door of the building after making sure all the doors were unlocked. I would walk toward the street when a shot would fire. I would fall, run back to the building and call 911 (actually a special dummy dispatch number) and tell them I’ve been shot and give them the address.
Heading out the door, I was planning my spectacular fall when the shots rang out. Two shots. My god, they were loud. No need to act the fall; I was so startled I fell flat on my ass! I got up and scrambled back into the building (falling again on my way) and called “911.” “Oh my god, I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot!”
Next I had to stumble out the front door and collapse in the grass across the street and yell for help. As I lay there, officers started calling out questions. “What’s your name?” “What’s your last name?” “When’s your birthday?” (What, they were gonna buy me a gift?) Sgt Paulsen ran up “administratively” (meaning outside the scenario) to say “Your name is Kirby, you own Kirby Vacuum and you’ve been shot in the chest” before scurrying away. After a few more minutes of my calling for help and trying to answer questions, Sgt Paulsen came back up to let me know that an armored truck would be coming to evacuate me. “Should I still be communicating with the officers at this point?” I asked. “No,” he replied, you’re four minutes into bleeding to death, at this point you’d be in and out of consciousness. So just lie there and gurgle."
A few minutes later the armored truck arrived and a half-dozen SWAT members in full riot gear including those long shields piled out. As I lay on the grass gurgling and simulating respiratory distress they rolled me onto a stretcher and bundled me into the truck. We drove off and they started questioning me about what was going on. Since I hadn’t been given any information on what I should be telling them, I improvised a story about two crazed gunmen busting into my business while I was having an employee meeting. I named my “employees” after my BF, my dest friend, her husband and another friend. We drove a few blocks and I was taken out of the truck and a paramedic started working on me. He ran a fluid line and applied a pressure bandage to my “chest wound.” If I’d known there was going to be real tape involved I’d have shaved my chest. By that time I didn’t have a lot of work to do simulating shock, since I was freezing on the ground and shivering with chattering teeth. The paramedic threw a blanket over me then had to leave to take care of another wounded man, this one playing one of the gunmen. This guy was totally into it, calling the cops assholes and fuckers and everything. next time I want to be a gunman and call some cops some names! The cops were really after me about getting a phone number for inside the building. I’m like, I have no idea.
After a few minutes Sgt Paulsen came over and was talking with the officers who’d questioned me and the paramedic, explaining administratively that I’d have been evacuated by this point and going over procedures. Then he asked about what information I’d given the officers. Turns out everything I’d told them was almost completely contradictory to the scenario he was trying to work. Oops. But he didn’t tell me anything he wanted me to tell the officers questioning me, so I had no way to know. He’sike “I need a few minutes to get this scenario back under control.” Oh dear.
I had left my backpack in the building when I left to get shot, so Sgt Paulsen took me on a tour of the “command center” (a handful of people and some radios) then walked me back to the building to get my stuff. I apologized for giving bad information when questioned and he was all “No, that’s OK, that’s fine. You were shot in the chest. You were delerious. This is just the kind of thing that would happen in real life.” Then he told me a little bit about the other parts of the scenario and how, if the officers asked the “gunman” the right questions they could get the information they needed to move to the next part. They were having trouble “transitioning” from securing the perimeter to negotiating because the officers weren’t asking the right questions. The phone number thing was important to open the negotiations but they needed to ask the “gunman” about whether he and the other “gunman” had cell phones.
After I got my stuff Sgt Paulsen walked me back to my car and thanked me again for helping out. I told him I had a blast and if he ever needed another hostage to give me a call.
