Let’s face it, for most of us, our lives have returned to the normal complacency that permeated our society prior to 9/11.  I’m quite sure that the lives of many of the families of the victims may never be ‘normal’ again.  Sure we’ve vowed to never forget 9/11 and we won’t. Will we forget the hard lessons that 9/11 delivered?

On Saturday morning, October 3^rd, The Village of Suffern hosted a Full Scale Exercise—the largest ever in the State of New York.  Twenty three law enforcement agencies attended and went through an intensive six-hour scenario that was put together and managed by Donahoo-Consulting.  SWAT and HAZMAT teams were on hand, bomb squads, three mobile command centers and dozens and dozens of personnel from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies took part.

At 9:30am a press conference was held in the ‘D’ lot. Ramapo Times was there.  By 9:35am nobody from the traditional print or broadcast media had arrived.  Now don’t get me wrong, having a press conference all to my self is pretty cool.  No jostling with others, nobody got in my way just as I clicked the shutter and those pesky camera men didn’t walk in front of me blocking my view.  I got all of my questions answered although I’ve learned that if I do more listening than talking I usually come out ahead.

When I returned home I visited the website of the two other outlets; the ones who I was sure would have attended.  On one website, I found absolutely no mention of the exercise.  On the other I found a brief paragraph that appeared to have been written to inform people not to travel in the area out of fear of gridlock. (There was no gridlock caused by the exercise.)  Interestingly enough, the short article that I had written about the Full Scale Exercise was the most visited story of the day.

I know that both media outlets (and others) were included on the same email that I had received from the Rockland County Sheriff’s department so I looked on both websites and could find no major stories that might explain why they had decided to sit this one out. 

Later on Saturday afternoon I visited the command center and Chief Clarke Osborn of the Suffern Police Department gave me a tour and described the events of the day.  Sheriff Kralik was there as was Chief Falco and many other top brass from the participating agencies. 

I’m not going to go into any detail about what happened for obvious reasons but I must say this; valuable lessons were learned and valuable experience was gained.  The only way to sharpen the skills of first responders is to put them through real-life scenarios.  Certain elements of this exercise delivered an element of realism that the participants could not have imagined beforehand.  

Communication between various agencies and personnel is absolutely critical and everyone put their egos aside in order to deal the with the situation as it unfolded. 

The commanders were called on to make decisions while under pressure.  Roles unexpectedly shifted.  Instead of a "how can I best support you so that you can get your job done" mentality, they were called upon to make realistic life and death decisions.  

This was a very successful exercise.  Based on what I saw and heard we are being kept safe by professionals who take their jobs very seriously.  This doesn’t in any way absolve the general public of our responsibility to stay alert and to notify authorities of suspicious activity. I have a great deal of confidence knowing that if things should get ugly, these people are on the job and now have realistic experience operating in high-pressure crisis situations.

As we walked through the command post it dawned on me that all of the men and women I met, competent people doing their jobs to keep the rest of safe and secure while we return to our normal lives, were in a no-win situation.  In the event that a terrorist incident was to take place, every thing these people do and every decision they make, will be under a microscope with the benefit of hindsight thrown in.  I’m quite sure that traditional media would show up to cover a real incident and would have no trouble digging up information and second-guessing decisions that were made by these same people.  It’s too bad they decided not to show up when these folks are undergoing an intense training exercise.

Later that afternoon I was at the Shamrock Hotel (great food, very reasonable prices and be sure to try the Sheppard’s pie) and Kathleen McIntyre from the Brookhaven National Laboratory walked in with two of her colleagues.  Chief Osborn had introduced me to Kathleen at the command center.  Kathleen is involved in training first responders and she and her team had travelled two hours to get to the exercise and now faced a two-hour ride home.  She invited me out for a visit to see what they do at Brookhaven and I plan to make the trip in the next few weeks.  Some might say that she was just doing her job.  I think it’s commendable that she and her team made a four-hour round trip to a six-hour exercise to assist our first responders to ensure that they are well prepared to keep us all safer.

What is amazing to me is how many people showed up and how much equipment was brought in to make sure that if the situation arises, our law enforcement personnel are well trained to professionally handle the unexpected.

The media has a choice when it comes to choosing what to cover, what to write about and what to leave alone.  My intention is not to criticize or embarrass anyone.  I just hope that we are not lulled into the false sense of complacency that existed prior to 9/11 because somebody decides that being prepared isn’t newsworthy enough.

I am more convinced now than ever before that Community Journalism is an important part of social media and social media is the wave of the future.  Members of the community must stand up, discuss what is important to their community and help to get the message out to others.  So few should never control the news received by so many.