Thanks to the Super Bowl and the sudden snow last night, there were almost no witnesses to the joint training exercise conducted this morning at the Midland Park Mall in Midland, TX. The drill was not announced to the public but a City of Midland website describes the event as a multi-agency training exercise designed to test the coordinated response to emergency events.
The exercise included the police departments of Midland and Odessa, Texas as well as Midland Fire/EMS and the Midland County Sheriff’s Dept. Also on hand were volunteer role-players and crisis actors. Mobile command units from the Midland and Odessa police departments were deployed along with a communications trailer and a Bearcat armored personnel transport.
Unfortunately the militarization of local police departments by the Department of Homeland Security has become commonplace in our country and not surprisingly the press was kept at a distance.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of today’s events was the sighting of a Midland police officer at an adjoining restaurant wearing a Craft International cold-weather hat while ordering breakfast burritos. The hat features the Craft International skull logo on the front; and on the back a slogan that reads ‘violence does solve problems’. Craft International has become infamous due to their presence at the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 and the evidence that they may have been the actual perpetrators of the attacks. 4chan ThinkTank is crediting with releasing much of the damning evidence , including this photo.
James Franklin
