Volunteered at American Heroes Challenge today in Las Vegas

[Wounded Ronin]

This weekend, in Las Vegas, a competition between SWAT teams from various jurisdictions, including county SWAT teams, federal teams, military teams, etc. took place called the American Heroes Challenge. The purpose of the competition is to raise funds to build a veteran's memorial in Las Vegas, which does not have one at this time.

http://www.americanheroeschallenge.com/

Today I volunteered at that event. I spent the morning directing traffic, and in the afternoon I was able to be a role player in an event called "Informant Contingency Rescue", or something along those lines. In this event, an informant and a bad guy are sitting in a car. The bad guy gets suspicious and eventually will kill the informant, so SWAT must run onto the scene in order to evacuate the informant before the bad guy shoots him with simunitions. In order to make the situation more complicated there are two unrelated people in the area who the team must deal with, a small room with someone inside of it, and another empty car. Both the car and the room contain weapons which should be retrieved by SWAT. SWAT has simunitions and everyone is wearing a mask so that they can shoot anyone they feel is appropriate. They also get to fling training flashbangs. The teams are scored on speed (time to complete the scenario), on whether or not they found all the weapons, and on the tactical soundness of their approach. And of course whether or not they managed to rescue the informant.

I got to be one of the uninvolved bystanders, so I enjoyed having several different teams point ARs at me and yell at me to get down and move around checking things out while covering me. The scenario ended each time before I got ziptied, but other people got ziptied every time.

I wasn't able to film any exercises involving myself, but I did use my phone to film three teams, King County (from out of state), Metro (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Dept.), and Henderson SWAT. However, I think that the videos would need some editing before they're watchable...there's a lot of wind sounds, and two of the videos are sideways because I was holding the phone the wrong way for a while before I realized my mistake. X|

If someone could edit the videos to make them watchable, it would be pretty cool to share them with this forum. If anyone is interested let me know and I'll put them on Rapidshare, and PM the download info to whomever is interested.

[Robstafarian]

If someone could edit the videos to make them watchable, it would be pretty cool to share them with this forum. If anyone is interested let me know and I'll put them on Rapidshare, and PM the download info to whomever is interested.

That event sounds really cool. If no one with actual skill volunteers, I'll do the best I can editing the videos.

[Lord Skeletor]

Good of you to support an event like this.

[Robstafarian]

Good of you to support an event like this.

My experiences with you, SFGOON, and pretty much everyone else on this site who has a blue or green badge has significantly increased my “support your local badass” cheerleading. :zicon_ram

EDIT: Wounded Ronin always seemed to be way ahead of me on this.