Rockville Centre police train for hostage situation at Mercy Medical Center

“Hostage negotiators responding. They request that you do not enter the room the hostage is in.”

Lt. Christopher Romance of the Rockville Centre Police Department spoke with a calm authority as he relayed the message to his officers. “Suspect is a white male, he has two female hostages.”

Six men, including Mayor Francis Murray and Police Commissioner Charles Gennario, stood outside Mercy Medical Center’s St. Anne’s building, taking careful note of what was going on in the hospital. Had the situation been real, there would likely have been a number of news helicopters overhead and significantly more officers present.

In an actual hostage situation, Gennario said, every available Rockville Centre officer would be on scene, as well as police from other Nassau County departments. Although there hasn’t been a hostage situation in Rockville Centre like the one the department was preparing for, the commissioner noted it is worth the time to train. “You have to be prepared for it,” Gennario said. “It could happen tomorrow.”

According to Gennario, before the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, the tactics of police were to “surround and isolate,” but since that time, first police responders have been trained to take action and, if necessary, stop the violence. “There is a lot of coordination that goes into this, with an escalating chain of command,” Gennario said, adding that it could be up to 45 minutes before a tactical team arrives and the officers need to know what to do in that situation.

“The suspect is confined to a southwest corner office. The office is secured,” Romance, the organizer of the exercise, relayed again.

Gennario stressed the difficulty of a hostage situation, especially for the first ranking officers on scene. “There is a lot of responsibility on the sergeant as the first one on scene,” Gennario explained. “If he feels the situation is breaking down, he may have to send someone in and he’ll be second-guessed the rest of his life.”

A large reason for the training was not only for the officers to gain experience, but also to learn to work with Mercy security, which is responsible for locking down the hospital in the case of such an emergency. An early miscommunication on who should be at the command post aside, the exercise seemed to go over without a hitch.

“The suspect is surrendering. He is going to throw the gun out the door into the hallway, Romance said into his walkie-talkie.

As they led the ‘gunman,’ out of the building in handcuffs, the officers were smiling and joking with each other. This time, the situation was not real, but they know that the training can be valuable.

“I think it went very well,” Romance said, before debriefing his men.