"You can't stay stagnant. You have to keep pushing and developing," says Cst. Jonathan Goertzen, Team Leader of the Regional Support Tactical Team (RSTT), which is coming up on 11 years since its formation. "There's always new tactics to learn and, if we sit back on our heels, it's not the right thing to do."
The team gathered in Altona on Wednesday for one of its regular training days - this time the focus was on bus assault procedures and how to diffuse high risk situations that may take place on them.
"We don't have city transit, so we use school buses because we have a lot of school divisions in our three areas with a ton of buses. So, we focused strictly on school bus tactics and how to diffuse those situations within that platform," explained Goertzen.
High risk, low frequency
Wednesday's goal was rescuing someone from a hostage situation on a school bus, with the help of some volunteer actors.
"There were multiple individuals on the bus and then we would do our tactics as far as how to get on the bus in the proper way and everything surrounding that," said Goertzen.
"There's obviously a lot of vulnerable individuals on a school bus because of their age, so we have to take that seriously," he added. "It's moveable so it's different than a stand-alone structure like a residence, so there's a lot of different challenges with a lot of windows and stuff, so it definitely has to be trained for."
Later in the day, the team headed over to the fire department training grounds in town and worked with a K-9 attached to the unit, to clear a house.
"The team needs to be familiar with the K-9 because it's in such close proximity with the dog and with the handler," explained Goertzen.
The RSTT consists of members from the Altona, Winkler and Morden police services.