PEABODY — The Peabody Police Department used the recently closed Nordstrom at the Northshore Mall to run training exercises last week.
Capt. Scott Richards, head of the department’s training division, led the scenario-based training of all patrol officers, allowing them to practice high-stress situations involving an individual who breached a building.
“We give them the scenario, and then we let them search the building and find the person, and then we watch what they’re doing and how they’re doing it,” Richards said. “We’re making sure that their tactics are good and that they do the right thing safely and accomplish the mission.”
In addition, K-9 units were brought into the space to assist with training scenarios where dogs are deployed to find an armed perpetrator before human units are sent in to apprehend the individual.
A new device the training division is using for these sessions is a small drone the department borrowed from Beverly Police Department, which can be used for interior searches.
“We can send that drone throughout this space, downstairs, everywhere in the building, to search, which now takes the dog out of the line of fire,” Richards said. “I’m going to be getting one of those for our guys.”
Under Richards in the Peabody police training division are Lt. Timothy Sullivan and Sgt. Jonathan Blodgett, all of whom are firearm training certified. Together, they organize these sessions and ensure all patrolmen are properly trained.
“The biggest thing in policing is we’re just trying to always stay ahead of the curve and evolve. A lot of times in policing, you learn new training methods from other incidents,” Blodgett said. “We’re trying to always stay ahead of the curve, and that way, we train on something before we see something, as opposed to see something and then train on it.”
This means the department is always jumping at opportunities to take advantage of a large, open space to conduct training scenarios, something that the Northshore Mall has always been happy to help out with.
“We’ve always had a wonderful working relationship with the Northshore Mall. We’ve been very fortunate because the mall has always allowed us to use empty space like this to do this training,” Richards said. “Whether it’s active shooter training, whether it’s search and rescue training, whatever it is, the mall has always been fantastic.”
While training is scheduled to finish up this week, Richards hopes to get more training in after hearing the new tenant of the space, Dick’s Sporting Goods, may not start moving in on the planned date of April 1.
It’s especially important they get a lot of sessions in as the department has added new officers recently, so making sure they are up to speed and on the same page as the rest of the department is essential.
“We’re trying to get everybody integrated with one another, so that it’s almost like plug and play. It doesn’t matter who’s here. They all know what they’re doing,” Richards said. “Somebody takes the lead, they work as a team, and they get done what has to get done. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a school guy or a patrol guy. We had detectives up here earlier today, and we had them go through this.”
An important aspect of the training is stress inoculation, where the officers try to replicate the real-life feeling of these emergency scenarios so that when it’s not a drill, they are prepared.
“We’ll have alarms going off. We’ll push the pace so that people have different stress mechanisms with cardiovascular auditory responses,” Blodgett said. “We try to simulate real-life adrenaline and stress to the best we can. I would say that my priority in training is real-world scenarios with incorporated stress.”
Of course, safety is also a top priority, with a safety officer appointed for each training day who will meet with everyone when they first come in to ensure their firearms aren’t going to harm anyone.
Then, at the end of the day, they will group together to debrief and discuss what went right and what went wrong, and the training division will also get feedback from officers so they can improve for the future as well.
“It doesn’t do any good to do this training and not tell somebody if they did something wrong; that defeats the purpose of training,” Richards said. “It’s positive reinforcement, and it’s ‘you could do this better.’ We have to do it because sometimes we have to be a little critical of somebody if they did something wrong because it theoretically could cost somebody their life.”
The payoff comes when the officers are out in the field and responding to calls with the tactics they’ve been taught, especially with de-escalation and trying not to go straight to a physical response.
Richards hopes to spread awareness of the diligent training Peabody officers go through so that citizens can trust the police are experienced and knowledgeable on an array of emergency situations.
To that end, he also runs the Citizens’ Academy, where interested residents can take the ten-week course to get first-hand experience with Peabody officers, learning about everything that goes into keeping the city safe.
Included in the program are lessons on domestic abuse, motor vehicle stops, trips to the indoor shooting range, and a tour of the Middleton House of Correction, something the academy has just started back up for the first time since the pandemic.
Richards hopes that students will come away from the class with a deeper understanding of the police department and what the officers do on a day-to-day basis, getting an idea of the far-reaching responsibilities of officers many citizens may not know about, like their work with senior citizens or in schools.
“It’s very interactive. We love questions. We love explaining stuff. And unlike some of the other programs out there, we talk in real terms,” Richards said. “The whole point about the Citizens Academy, in my opinion, is to allow the citizens of Peabody and the taxpayers to really get an inside look of the police department, how it works, how it operates, and the real-life situations that we have to deal with every day.”
Applications for the academy can be printed from www.peabodypd.org or picked up at the Peabody Police Department.
