BY KEITH LACEY
It looked like a scene right out of a Hollywood action flick Friday afternoon at College Boreal.
Second year students in the Police Foundations program staged a hostage taking, complete with members of the Greater Sudbury Police tactical unit, police helicopters, and city EMS personnel.
The hostage taking was simulated inside a city bus, where some "bad guys" held two dozen hostages for over three hours.
The activity was sponsored by College Boreal's teachers and was once again organized with the full co-operation of Greater Sudbury Police, OPP and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said Helene Fontaine, a psychology professor in the Police Foundations, Correctional Services and Law and Security programs at the French-language college.
"We started doing these simulations about six years ago...it was nice to hold one again because we hadn't done one in the last couple of years," said Fontaine.
About two dozen second-year Police Foundations students do most of the hard work in preparing for the simulation, including coming up with the scenario - in this case having hostages taken on a city bus - and work for several weeks organizing the event, said Fontaine.
Friday's simulation was organized to simulate exactly how police, ambulance and emergency personnel would act in a real-life situation, said Fontaine.
About eight members of the tactical unit were armed with the weapons they would use in a real-life situation and tried to use the same language they would use in trying to negotiate if the situation were real, said Fontaine.
The hostages included a pregnant woman and elderly man and the "negotiations" between the hostage takers and police authorities included deals to try and get the weakest hostages off the bus first, she said.
The hostage takers were also in contact with Dr. Gagnon, a local psychiatrist who is recognized as one of the top hostage negotiators in the country, said Fontaine.
"What we try and do is make everything as realistic as possible," she said. "The students want to get a real taste of what things might be like if they become police officers and might one day have to deal with a situation like this."
The students work incredibly hard putting this event together and a big part of their final semester mark is related to how hard they work individually and as a team for this event, she said.
Ryan Cerevolo, 21, a second-year police foundations student, said the simulation is a lot of fun, but does involve a lot of hard work.
"We spend much of our second semester putting this event together and it does a take a lot of hard work and planning," he said. "We all try to make the simulation as real as possible.
"It's a lot of fun putting this all together and it takes a lot of teamwork and dedication from all the students."
The teachers are very supportive and it's reassuring to see hundreds of students spend some time watching the simulation, said Cerevolo.
At the end of the simulation, the hostage takers were "arrested" and a formal press conference was held with police detailing what happened.
Fontaine said the local police services and EMS personnel go out of their way to assist the students and staff and the simulated events could not be staged and help the students as much as they do without their much-appreciated co-operation.
