Yellowknife (Oct 20/06) - In the hours preceding Tuesday's armed stand-off on Cinnamon Court, police invited media to observe a mock stand-off training exercise on the Ingraham Trail.

Sergeant Larry O'Brien said by having media observe what goes on behind the scenes during a stand-off, reporters would better understand how police operations work, and how to report on events of a serious and sensitive nature.

Suspects holed up inside a building often monitor media broadcasts closely, he said. TV stations broadcasting live footage from helicopters, for example, could give away the officers' locations jeopardizing their safety, he said.

Yellowknifer, CBC and the Aboriginal People's Television Network attended the training exercise.

The other major media outlet in the capital, CJCD, did not. During the real armed standoff Tuesday afternoon, reporters from the station broadcasted the movements of the RCMP's tactical unit, earning a stern rebuke from O'Brien.

The exercise, which was interrupted when the real stand-off unfolded in Yellowknife later that day, took place 60-kilometres out on the Ingraham Trail, at a cabin on Pickerel Lake belonging to the Air Cadets.

The fictional incident began at 4 a.m. with a report of the suspect assaulting his wife. The emergency response team (ERT) arrived and secured the man's abandoned truck, then moved on to surround the cabin.

"They've stormed this whole area," said Insp. Parker Kennedy, the detachment's officer in charge of district policing.

"It's an enormous undertaking that they really enjoy doing."

Aside from the ERT's black SUVs, other vehicles on the scene included a camper van with a transmitter, a minivan where everything was being recorded, and a mobile command unit borrowed from the department of transportation in Hay River.

Pretending that the Air Cadet cabin they were borrowing for the day didn't have a phone, police ran a wire for a remote phone across the steep, rocky terrain from the command unit to the cabin.

Inside the cramped mobile command unit, negotiators sat at a table. One talked on the phone with the suspect about his circumstances and his demands, while two others listened in on headphones and scribbled notes.

In the fictional scenario, the man inside the cabin had found out his best friend, the cabin's owner, was having an affair with his wife. Suicidal, he retreated to the cabin and threatened to use propane to blow it up with himself inside.

After visiting the command unit, media followed the communications cable's route through the woods to the cabin. Dressed in black, with camouflage paint on their faces, ERT officers with headsets and assault rifles lurked in the woods around the cabin, virtually invisible to the casual observer. Sgt. O'Brien had to point their locations out on the return trip.

To test their perimeter, an officer playing the cabin's owner attempted to evade the blockade by parking up the road and trekking through the woods, but the ERT stopped him before he reached the cabin.

Sgt. O'Brien and Insp. Kennedy then invited media inside the cabin to see the suspect, something that obviously would never happen in a real stand-off. An officer portraying the suspect, dressed in a green plaid jacket and warm from a roaring woodstove, paced back and forth from window to window, peering out.

The scenario took six weeks to plan, and only three people in the detachment knew the full story-line.

Team being evaluated

Insp. Roch Fortin, head of the Yellowknife detachment, said three evaluators were on hand to watch how he and his team handled the mock stand-off.

Fortin said that, as the man in charge, his team of officers, negotiators, and psychologists gather all the information they can and deliver it to him. Then he makes the decisions on how to proceed.

"I may have to give the green light to take down the bad guys, and that's a tough decision to make," he said. "Everyone's information is important and someone's recording everything I do because if someone's hurt, there will be an inquiry."

RCMP staff were on hand from Yellowknife, Behchoko, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and Norman Wells to participate in the exercise, said Insp. Kennedy.

"It's not only going to happen in Yellowknife," he said. "It could happen anywhere."

The exercise was interrupted early Tuesday afternoon when the ERT was called back to Yellowknife to attend a real seven-hour stand-off at Cinnamon Court, that ended without shots being fired.