The Department of Homeland Security and New York City’s police and fire departments engaged in an exercise to test new technologies the three entities believe could aid in efforts to contain and respond to shooting incidents.DHS said Monday responders took part in a scenario that involved multiple active shooters with improvised explosive devices at the Leon M. Goldstein High School in Brooklyn.
The department added the exercise aimed to evaluate tools selected by NYPD, FDNY and DHS’ science and technology directorate that could support future operations.
“S&T’s role in this exercise is to see if new tools and equipment that have been designed to help responders in an active shooter situation perform as they should,†said Reginald Brothers, DHS under secretary for science and technology.
Brothers added video footage from the activity would support the directorate’s efforts to develop equipment that could support responders during high-pressure situations.
DHS said responders used SOCET GXP for geospatial intelligence; Mutualink to aid voice, text and radio interoperability; Crowd Evacuation Software system to assist in evacuation and the Unmanned Aerial Systems Software to help model threat vectors, launch points and potential distances during UAS attacks.
The U.S. Army Armament Research and Development Engineering Center provided evaluators and cameras to capture video footage to analyze the exercise from their Combating Terrorism Technology Evaluation Program.
NYPD officers from three special operations units took part in the exercise such as the department’s emergency services unit, critical response command and strategic response group.
