On December 21, 2022, someone at the front desk declared through a speaker system that two armed men were inside the state-run Hawthorn Center in suburban Detroit and that shots were fire. It was a simulation. NOBODY had been told.
This sort of poorly planned, if well-intentioned, training failure happens more often than people know. Rule Number Three in the Reality Based Training Association’s Art of Pretending is “Don’t pretend with other people who are ALSO not pretending.” Simulations need to be planned, properly briefed to any who might be affected by them, and strict safety protocols must be followed. Failure to do so in such situations have led to fatalities in the past. In this case, the fallout was emotional trauma.
These failures are 100% preventable through utilizing simple safety protocols.
Read the article about this incident by clicking on the link below.
Feel free to reach out the the RBTA to learn about safety protocols designed to avoid tragedies such as this and others.
And download the Top Ten Red Flags (CLICK HERE) that anyone finding themselves subjected to any form of simulation can know with a high degree of certainty that the people running the simulation are less than competent, and in some cases, fatally negligent.