A crazed inmate is running wild through a caged hallway.  He's hostile and he's armed.  The Orange County, Fla., Special Response Team (SRT) arrives on the scene.  Two flash bangs and a takedown later, the inmate is restrained and extracted from the cell.

It's a situation that any emergency response team could encounter on the job and it's one of the scenarios that Joel Ashe, Platoon Commander of the Orange County SRT, and his officers devised to tackle before an audience of their peers during the 2004 Mock Prison Riot.  It's a chance for the team to test out new technologies and practice different training techniques so it can better prepare for the "real thing."

"It's basically the most realistic training you can get anywhere," said Ashe.  "[The Mock Prison Riot experience is] very valuable-[you're] not only meeting other teams and sharing information, but [also] trying out the new technology and getting to use [it] in a real-life scenario."

Setting Up Scenarios

Orange County's SRT will enact two "real life" scenarios at the eighth annual Mock Prison Riot: a cell extraction and another situation in which an officer has been injured in the dining hall and needs medical attention.  These scenarios are created by the teams themselves and represent situations that they may someday have to contend with in their correctional institutions.  

"[The scenarios are based] on stuff that we could possibly face and [situations] that we'd like to train on," Ashe said.  "We look around and [think], if this happened, what would we do?"

Last year, one of the scenarios the Orange County SRT developed and performed at the Riot involved the rescue of a secretary who was trapped in an administrative area during an inmate uprising, an idea that was conjured up when Ashe and his team began wondering what would happen if an inmate gained access to the administrative area in their own building.

"Every year we try to write something different that we can practice," Ashe said.  "We write the scenarios [before the Riot] and we walk through [them]--how we're going to do them, how we're going to train."

A Different Type of Training

This year, the scenarios are different, but the SRT's training for them has been as intense as the training in previous years.  About two months ago, the team ramped up its usual eight hours of monthly training to eight hours each week in preparation for the Mock Prison Riot.

But acting out the scenarios at the Riot, in a real prison setting with "inmates", who are typically played by area college students, is far better training than what the officers could ever receive on their home range, according to Scott Sever, Squad Leader of the SRT.

"When you have people you do not know acting as inmates, it raises the intensity of the situation," Sever said.  "They're going to obviously run [and] fight harder when you grab a hold of them."

Getting a Taste of Technology

Aside from more realistic training, the Mock Prison Riot also provides teams with an opportunity to sample new technologies and try them out during their disturbance scenarios.  The three-day event is a forum for vendors to test-out and promote their products to people working in the corrections industry.

"The vendors up there will give you stuff to take back," said Ashe, noting that, in the past, the county has purchased stab-resistant vests, helmets and a gas dispenser after seeing them at the Mock Riot.  This year, the SRT will experiment with products like soc-bullets, inert smoke and a new stretcher during their scenarios.  It's the less lethal products that are featured there that mainly pique the team's interest.

"We're big into the less lethal [methods of dealing with disturbances]," Ashe said.  "We've gotten into tactically going in and basically using gas and less lethal [technology] to subdue the inmate."

Ashe hopes that, in the spirit of information and technique sharing, Orange County's less lethal style is something that other teams will see and learn from.

"Our department realizes [that] it's better to spend money on the [less lethal] tools and let us use those [rather than brute force]," Ashe said.  "An injury to an officer is a lot more expensive that buying guns and ammunition," he added.  "We're training in a different way."

A Focus on Teams

For other teams who are still using rough-and-tumble techniques, Ashe hopes that, after witnessing the SRT's less lethal way of handling disturbances, they may acquire some new ideas about emergency response--ones that might keep both officers and inmates safer.  
But, he also believes that his team has something to gain from watching other officers act out scenarios, too.

"We pick up a lot of stuff from them," Ashe said.

Sever agrees.

"[The other teams] benefit and we benefit because if 10 teams did the exact same cell extraction or officer down scenario, even if they were given the [same] instructions, they're all going to do it a different way," Sever said.   "You actually learn from other teams and they learn from you," he added.  "Training like that is invaluable--you can't get that at a school."

Aside from providing for an exchange of techniques and information between teams, the Mock Prison Riot also allows the officers to get a feel for working alongside their team members in an emergency setting.

"It's very important that we use teamwork and everybody is on the same page in what we're doing," Ashe said.  "Teamwork is the only way we accomplish anything."

Getting in the Competitive Spirit

While teamwork, training and technology are all part of the Mock Prison Riot, there's another draw for officers: the annual skills competition, which took place last weekend.  The two-day event that precedes the scenarios makes the Riot all the more exciting for teams, especially the Orange County SRT, which placed second this year behind the Emergency Response Team from Harris County, Texas.

While the SRT was unable to claim the top spot this year, Sever is happy just to participate.

"It's an honor just to compete," Sever said.  "There's a lot more competition this year, he added.  "It gets better and better each year."

With the skills competition, the scenarios and the training sessions, teams come away from the Mock Riot better prepared for disturbances in their correctional facilities and, depending on where they place in the skills competition, with a sense of victory.

"You get bragging rights every year," Ashe said.  "It's nice to go and compete against people from across the nation."

Resources:

For more information about the Orange County SRT, call Allen Moore (407) 836-0326

For more information about the Mock Prison Riot, call OLETC at (888) 306-5382