Portland police and firefighters will converge on a Central Maine Power facility Wednesday evening for a first-of-its-kind joint training exercise. The public safety units will be practicing how they would coordinate their response to an incident involving an active shooter.
Portland police training Sergeant Dan Hayden says each department undertook separate drills in the fall of 2022 that helped them develop response protocols. Hayden says this joint training drill "will put that into practice and actually see how well we can work together to improve from past exercises where we noticed there were areas we could do better."
The training exercise will run from 5 pm to 10 pm on Wednesday, Aug. 16. Portland police say, during that time, Canco Road between Read Street and Holiday Drive, near the CMP facility, will be closed.
Hayden says the public may notice large numbers of police and fire vehicles converging on that location and may also hear some loud bangs during the training exercise.