Keolis partnered with RTC and the Reno Police Department to conduct a joint SWAT training exercise at the Washoe County Training Center on Wednesday.
They trained maneuvers on a rented RTC bus, and the SWAT team practiced tactical run-throughs, showing what they would do in a real scenario.
This collaboration aims to improve public safety for everyone.
Officer Bryan Christensen, the assistant team leader with the Reno SWAT team, walked us through their first steps of training.
"First off, what we're doing right now is a walk-through of the bus," he said. "We're learning where all the controls of the bus are so that in the event that we have to do a critical incident on a bus, we know how to stop the bus, quickly apply the brakes, disconnect any power to the engine, and open up the doors so that we can get in and then neutralize that critical incident."
One of the scenarios they ran through was a hostage arrest, where someone has taken over the bus and they have to neutralize the situation.
"We're physically going to be practicing opening up the doors and flooding it with operators so that we can take over the entire scene inside as quickly and as efficiently as possible," he said.
Officer Christensen says this scenario has happened before.
"It happened when I was on patrol," he said. "I believe it was about 2018. We had someone take a bus, with people on the bus, and start driving up north. That got handled; they were able to get the bus to stop. The guy was a former employee and said he was just doing his route."
Since the SWAT team reviews their own recordings, they are able to efficiently train for the next time it happens.
"If we don't have the practice or we're not prepared and it does happen, we're basically starting from scratch," he said.
