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MANNHEIM, Germany — The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and civilians of the U.S. Army Confinement Facility-Europe on Coleman Barracks conducted their quarterly Emergency Action Plan June 23.
With the assistance of local law enforcement personnel, they used the scenario of an escaped prisoner to test the structure and operability of their standard operating procedure.
With one of their personnel playing the role of the escaped prisoner, the facility sounded its alarms around 9:30 a.m. and the hunt for the escaped prisoner began.
Maj. Chad Goyette, commander of the U.S. Army Confinement Facility-Europe, said the overall intent of the exercise was about “exercising internal control mechanisms such as commander critical information requirement notifications, attempted searches, interfacing with the local community and host nation personnel.”
With the sounding of the alarm, all the pieces needed to bring the escaped prisoner in were put into place. Search teams were organized and divided into sectors, military police were stationed at the gates of the installation, German Polizei were notified and the Emergency Operations Command Post was established.
The timely notification of the incident to local Polizei meant they were able to immediately send three patrols to monitor the Coleman Barracks fence line, Major Goyette said.
“For so long we operated on an island out here in the facility. One of my very first goals was to remember we are a community asset. So one of my driving factors was to figure out how to incorporate the community in everything we do,” he said.
The participation and integration of community law enforcement is essential to the success of EAP scenarios like this and would be even more so in a real-world scenario. To stress the importance of their participation, Major Goyette said, “Every time we do an exercise — for the planning and the actual execution — we invite as many (local) organizations as we can.”
With their SOP in hand, the EOC was able to direct and coordinate the movement of the search teams and keep information flowing back and forth between the Soldiers conducting the search and the facility personnel. The circulation of information was one of the contributing factors in the quick apprehension of the “escaped convict.”
“Everyone knew their parts, everyone knew what their role was and, because of that, communication was great and we were able to apprehend the prisoner fast,” said Sgt. Matthew Ruebush, a watch commander with the 529th Military Police Company.
Sergeant Ruebush said he felt the exercise simulated about 75 percent of what a real-world experience might be like.
Overall, the exercise had a great deal of reality. There were Soldiers scouring the bushes and fields and looking in every nook and cranny of Coleman Barracks to find their man.
Even after having a wrench thrown in their operations during the capture of the prisoner, the Soldiers were still able to react quickly and complete their mission well ahead of the suspense they were given.
“We did a good job,” Major Goyette said. “The search teams actually put in real effort and you saw real benefit from that effort.”
Despite the quickness with which the exercise was completed, Major Goyette noted there is still work to be done to update the SOP and apply lessons learned from the obstacles encountered.
“We have learned so much from our junior Soldiers and their observations that we have literally changed our standard operating procedures,” he said.
The staff and Soldiers will take the obstacles they encountered during the EAP, apply them to the SOP, and continue to review the data and learn lessons from this quarter’s exercise to make next quarter’s EAP even better.
