Eau Claire (WQOW) - The Eau Claire Police Department put Tuesday's bad weather to good use, giving officers
the perfect opportunity to train for the unexpected.
"You can't prepare
for the unexpected other than to recognize the unexpected will happen," says Eau Claire Police Sgt.
Travis Quella.
If you are one of the 100 officers
of the Eau Claire Police Department, you must be ready to handle anything while
on the job, and while behind the wheel.
"Awareness is as
important or more important than being able to physically handle the car," says
Sgt. Quella.
And Tuesday's wet weather made for
perfect practice conditions.
"We of course work
in Wisconsin, and several of the months you're going to have the inclement
conditions, and you'll see out there on the range where officers could be doing
a certain speed in August, where they're not going to be able to do that now,"
Sgt. Quella says.
At the 3M facility, officers were
put through three different scenarios:
Proper control of the car, emergency
stopping, and perhaps one of the most dangerous:
"Headquarters to
units, active shooter, active shooter on the east side of the 3M building," the
training officer tells a police officer.
"Every year there
are officers that find themselves in a very dangerous situation in their squad
car. There's a person who's willing to shoot at the officer, and frankly, often
has the upper hand because of the officer's seated position, who's seat belted
in, and our weapons are secure."
"We're trying to
teach officers a safe way that they can at least get the rifle deployed and
ready so that when they do come to a stop at this call, they're not taking
those valuable seconds at the scene where they could be coming under
fire."
Emergency driving isn't all about
speed.
"Is the call that
you're going to an emergency that you're going to need to exceed the speed
limit," Sgt. Quella asks his officers. "Often times we encourage officers to
take a few extra seconds, recognizing that when we are in emergency mode
driving with lights and sirens there are some inherent risks with that."
Tuesday's emergency driving training
was part of training every officer must go through every two years.
As you saw
in the video, police use the vacant 3M building in Eau Claire for different types of training
exercises.
