Inside MET police firearms centre where London cops train for raids, shootings and terror attacks

Inside MET police firearms centre where London cops train for raids, shootings and terror attacks

This is the Met police training center for armed officers in gravesen Kent here the elite officers task with responding to London’s life and death incidents learn how to take and Save a Life my name is Mike Sullivan I’m the sun’s crime editor and I’ve been granted access behind the scenes to see for

Myself the extreme pressure and intense scrutiny that officers go through when responding to such dangerous Situations on average there are around 4,000 armed incidents a year in the capital and another 800 pre-planned operations which officers who carry guns will turn out on those cops that respond to them are in units that have undergone hundreds of hours of extra training before they’re deployed onto the streets it’s one of

The most dangerous areas of policing and not just a physical danger but the risks that officers carry in terms of the backlash from the law afterwards they not only risk their lives but also their freedoms in September of last year around 300 of them down their weapons in

Protest after a colleague was charged with murder following that rebellium then Home Secretary soel braan ordered an accountability review of policing to establish whether officers would be in treated fairly under the current system me police commissioner Samar roley is calling for Urgent reforms to make things fairer for his officers who can

Sometimes face years of scrutiny for their handling of life and death incidents I’ve come here to the Mets training facility to understand what goes into into making an armed officer and how they react when they’re facing dangers on the streets of the capital to protect the public specialist Firearms command in

The Met is known as m19 and we start our tour in the museum where the scale of capital’s Firearms problem is clear to see this one was made by a prisoner uh in one of a Ma’s prisons made in the machine shop and then subsequently found on a a prison

Search uh it fires a single shot 2 two bullet this one uh is a large caliber target revolver with a machined grip for machine to an individual’s hand with a suppressor and an obstacle sighting system on it for a large caliber target shooting this is more of a conventional

What we class as a self-loading pistol and so it’s semi-automatic it’s not fully automatic um very very common comes in many different forms works on a a magazine with bullets in it and as soon as you squeeze a trigger after making it ready the gun will recycle

Itself I say it will put another round in the chamber to make it ready to fire again this is 90% of modern day weapons will work on or pistols not all the items here can kill you and it’s hard to know even close up whether a firearm is

Genuine or not so all the uh the weapons that are on this side uh are all completely fake they’re completely ner will not fire any form of projectile whatsoever uh the weapons that carry on this side are real viable guns and will discharge a bullet there is no visual

Difference weight is quite a key thing but to work out that it’s heavy than something else you’ve actually got to be that close to pick it up or handle it and as for what officers might encounter on the street it’s very hard to tell nowadays it it really really is I mean

The some of the stuff in here is is ABS 100 years old so is relatively modern it’s you really do not know you really just don’t know what he currently out there there are around 3,000 Firearms officers in the Met who carry out different roles all of them must

Complete a set amount of training each year to keep their firearms blue ticket for senior officers that can total 250 hours of training annually that exercise was a training scenario in relation to either a ccer terrorist exercise or a hostage rescue whereupon life is at risk uh and that

Particular method of Entry is UT utilized where life is at risk or other exceptional circumstances the next exercise we’re shown is modeled on the B Clan theater attack in Paris back in November 2015 in which aund 13 people died we have a club premises here two floors

There’s no light inside there apart from strobe lights and we have loud music so we’re looking at taking out um a lot of the senses that police officers and everyone deals with so they’re going to go in there’s two armed suspects inside the club U multiple injured people

Inside so we deploy the two arvs to save life inside the address so their main role there is to um hopefully to confront and neutralize the threat in this scenario officers storm a nightclub before assessing the Carnage which a terrorist suspects have inflicted downstairs we have four fatalities and one person with a

Penetrating chest wound upstairs there’s a large number of people that um got catastropic bleeds or penetrating chest wounds from The Gunshot so we’ve got two what we call nest in sights one upstairs one downstairs one upstairs is a phys one so we go in we can un walk you

Through it so as soon as there no longer a threat they just have to stop they have to spin change caps almost to work a medic cap and from there they just like triaging everybody inside that building so you have to find everyone treat everyone stop them bleeding keep

Them breathing once everyone’s been found and you’ve done that rapid intervention life- saving uh treatment then you can get onto comms get everyone to come come to you to help you but then once you’ve got that time then you start doing real medican work so we’re looking at stripping them down finding the

Wounds that going to kill them slow um expose the wounds that were going to kill them quick get oxygen those that need oxygen open the Airways the the people that are unresponsive um from then what we just need to keep them warm get help to us as quick as possible cuz

Ultimately they need to go to hospital they’re not going to survive just by laying on the floor with our treatment when you have arvs dealing with someone that’s been attacked had acid thrown on them stabbed run over shot arvs are the best people to be dealing with that

Initial trauma we get in on Data with emails to say that they’re initial interventions have saved life and if it wasn’t for them with their skills and the kit that they’ve got these people would di Firearms officers can use their medical training to respond to life-threatening situations that may not

Involve weapons and they often do so this is enhanced medic training those two vehicles down there uh respon vehicles and you can see we’ve got a number of casualties uh in the street live casualties as well so the instructors are finding out from the students at the moment what the injuries

Are the students are making their assessment of those injuries and then responding accordingly last year more than 800 incidents were attended by Firearms officers which did not involve guns and which required specialist medical help they save lives as well as rarely on occasions taking them the guys

And girls out on the streets of London are very very highly trained menics they consistently and persistently respond to 999 calls 66 times uh during November they responded to life-saving incidents outside of firearms incidents one of the first exercises potential Firearms undergo is a simulated incident in the Judgment range

Aimed at testing an officer’s ability to make decisions under extreme pressure obviously it replicates the handgun that they would normally have but like I say it’s just full of electrics I know you’ve had a squeeze of the trigger and if you pull it it will

Make a bang so the system will pick up the bang the system knows where the laser pointing at the time when it makes the bang so it shows where where the person’s been shot the inst structures can change the outcomes of the scenario as they pay out presenting officers with

Alternative endings to the incidents so you driv past to school yeah uh there are multiple uh phone calls about uh an active shooter many people children saying someone’s been shot someone’s been shot and you have to do um like single person Emergency entry to confront that shooter so other units

Are on their way so you might come across some other cops so don’t shoot them okay stick the gun down we’ll play the video back and will’ll stop on each round you fired so we can see now on the screen how it pans out two I reckon it’s gone through his arm

And into that yeah into her sternum it’s sh on the system no hit Zone it sh a miss so you shot the girl in the green that’s the scenario played back on screen instructors rigorously interrogated my decision making and I have to admit it wasn’t up to much so

The person with the gun were they definitely the person that had shot the casualties he had a a gun he was holding up a gun and the people in that room were frightened of him they were that’s what I thought maybe a student that had taken the gun off the marauding gunman

And he’s holding the gun going wow that’s amazing I managed to get the gun off the bad guy and he’s run off so innocent student hero maybe everybody relax police officers look I’ve got the gun I’ve taken it off him everyone’s safe now I’m the hero bang bang bang

Bang bang dead I’ve thought that they standing back against the wall um and that to me suggested that they didn’t feel so when you shot him and he fell on the floor did he drop the gun I did look to see if he still had the gun and I

Didn’t see it you didn’t see the gun no so why did you shoot him again because I just wanted to make sure he was dead when you’re saying you wanted to make sure he was dead so that’s attempted murder even if he doesn’t die I thought

He was a risk to be other people in the room because of the gun because of but you don’t know why the gun was at that point no could you see both his hands no what color was the floor white and what color was the gun right so pretty easy

To to see the gun couldn’t take the Childs they didn’t still have that done and would therefore be a risk to the other people in the room do you think you shot him in the back I think I did you didn’t consider that he might not be able to hear and

You just shot him in the back you shot him once he fell over you weren’t sure where the gun was so you shot him another what five six times to make sure he was dead sounds like murder the experience was quite humbling hopefully you would shoot the bad guy he would

Fall over drop the gun you wouldn’t shoot him anymore you would go forward secure the gun and give life-saving first aid until the ambulance gets there they take him away everybody’s happy I felt mentally fatigued from my first attempt but on the second occasion I was more successful you’ve dropped off your

Colleague uh there is a a domestic uh dispute neighbor has heard the next door neighbor shouting and arguing they’ve been shouting and arguing a few times please present yourself control basically say there have been a number of calls to that house in the past 3 months police have

Gone there’s uh there’s never been any injuries there’s never been any silent disturbance both the male and female occupant of the house to said it was just a loud disagreement controll appears to be nobody present at the this address at the time now going up the stairs there are voices please protect yourself

Control urgent backup required present yourself now please present come on all right all right okay okay all right stop it get that gun drop that gun drop that gun hands up both of you so going through the the bottom of the house you announce yourself as police

Certainly in the initial bit I didn’t see anything that would have caused any concern anything do you notice anything that seemed a bit out of the ordinary there are no definitive outcomes in these scenarios more important is testing the officer’s ability to focus under extreme pressure and justify their actions when faced

With the decision to take a life or not and then you you said that you heard a woman’s voice sounded to me like a a distressed woman and a male voice that seem to be threatening this is not an exact science as human factors are involved mistakes can be made sometimes with fatal

Consequences but there is no doubt from what we have seen about the rigorous and professional training which these officers undergo stop it that gun drop that gun drop that gun hands up both of you

The Sun was given a tour of the MET police’s firearms training centre in Gravesend, Kent.

Here, the elite police officers tasked with tackling London’s armed incidents train to respond to life and death situations.

Watch the video to see how police storm a ‘nightclub’ in a simulated terror attack and conduct an armed ‘raid’ on a training building.

Plus, our Crime Editor Mike Sullivan becomes the first journalist to be put through his paces on the ‘Judgement Range’. It’s a video game style armed incident simulator used for coaching firearms officers in the field and post-incident briefings.

The split-second, life and death decisions faced by armed cops are hammered home in the school massacre simulation – as our Sun man ‘shoots’ two innocent people.

Read more:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25342450/met-police-specialst-firearms-training/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24874712/sir-mark-rowley-armed-cops-terrorist-met-police/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25332932/armed-police-officer-probe-killed-man-gun/

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