ARV units in Essex were sent to a ‘gunpoint car jacking’ only to find out that the critical incident was instead an unscheduled exercise that was being carried out by a private security company.
The incident occured on Tuesday 15th January in Waltham Abbey after several people called 999 after seeing what they believed was a real-life car jacking.
The National Police Air Service was also sent to the area in order to provide realtime intelligence and force support.
Once the armed crews had contained the area and surrounded the ‘suspects’ it was then established that they were in fact part of a private security company and were staging a fake kidnapping as part of an unscheduled training scenario.
Clearly, however, the training company had forgotten to inform Essex Police of their intentions.
Vehicles which had matched the description of those given by members of the public were stopped at gunpoint before police had managed to establish that the incident was a ‘training exercise’.
In a statement, Essex Police said:
“All available units deployed to the area on emergency response with our #Npas friends lifting off as well.
“Numerous firearms teams and units converged on the area and it was quickly sealed off.
“All vehicles or persons matching the descriptions were stopped and searched by officers.
“Eventually the suspects were identified and surrounded by armed officers.
“This could have gone horribly wrong as the suspects identified themselves as a (security company) staging a fake kidnapping as a training scenario!!!
“Brilliant.”
Essex Police added:
“To the security company, and you know who you are! Perhaps notify #Essexpolice next time or better still, train somewhere else.”
We thought that we would use a ‘fake’ picture of an Essex Police ARV in the featured image taken from GTA 5 – just to keep with the spirit of things….
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