News Releases

Community Alert: MCPD Emergency Services Unit to Conduct Search and Rescue Training Exercise

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, May 29, 2012

On June 2, 2012, the Emergency Services Unit of the Montgomery County Police Department will be conducting a search and rescue training exercise in the Gaithersburg area.

The Emergency Services Unit is a multi-discipline unit within the department's Special Operations Division that is responsible for Hazardous Materials/WMD Response, Special Operations Support, Tactical Emergency Medical Support, and Search and Rescue.  Members of the Emergency Services Unit are trained in two levels of Search and Rescue techniques and tactics - field operations and management.

The primary goal of the training exercise to be held on June 2 is to provide a real life scenario for the management team to practice the command coordination of multiple resources during a missing person search.  The Montgomery County Police Department responds to over 4000 missing person related calls each year.  Any one of these cases could lead to a large scale search.  Conducing real life training exercises is critical to the development and preparedness of the Emergency Services Unit.

Along with the MCPD Emergency Services Unit, members of the Fairfax County Police Search and Rescue Team and volunteer K9 teams from the Mid-Atlantic D.O.G.S. Search and Rescue, Chesapeake Search Dogs, and DOGS-East Search & Rescue will be participating in this exercise.

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The exercise on June 2 will be conducted from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. in the Gaithersburg area.  The community may see an increase in police activity which may include helicopters, K9 teams, and police search and rescue teams.  The impact on the community will be minimal, and there will be no impact on travel.

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Release ID: 12-093
Media Contact: mcpnews 
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