Montgomery County police officials say the public should not be alarmed if they see officers in uniforms conducting terrorist-activity response drills at Metro and MARC train stations between Monday and Thursday this week.
More than 160 representatives from the Montgomery police, the Sheriff’s office, Montgomery Fire/Rescue, Gaithersburg police, Rockville City police, Takoma Park police, Maryland State police and Metro Transit will participate in the exercises. Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur declined to say what sort of training activities police officers would be doing because it would not be “appropriate to go into the specifics of the type of training that we do to provide security.”
“Our purpose is to alert members of the community that there are exercises and training going on so they won’t be fearful if they see members of law enforcement in tactical uniforms at mass-transit locations,” Baur said. “We don’t want them automatically thinking that something is going wrong.”
The training is planned to overlap with the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, but county police said they have no information that there are any terrorist threats to Montgomery next week.
“This training is designed to duplicate the type of response that could be used to detect and prevent terrorist activity in our area,” a written statement from county police said. “Again, these are tests of deployment and training, not a response to anyidentified security threat.”
Montgomery County will also host a free concert Tuesday featuring the U.S. Navy’s Commodores Jazz Band to pay tribute to the 11 county residents who lost their lives in the 2001 attacks. The concert starts at 7 p.m. at Cabin John Regional Park Amphitheater on 7400 Tuckerman Lane in Potomac.
