DOC makes Konfitma debut

The Department of Corrections has made its Konfitma debut by participating this year for the first time by using the Saipan prison as a staging area for one of the exercise’s training scenarios.

During the last day of the Konfitma 2023 exercise that wrapped up yesterday, a hostage-taking setup was staged at the Department of Corrections, giving the department and its officers a chance to participate in the training for the first time and to reap its benefits.

To paint a picture, the scenario at DOC yesterday afternoon involved four inmates and a DOC officer. The inmates are drinking homemade moonshine in the common area, and as the officer calls for the men to return to their cells, they refuse to comply and held the officer hostage and assaulted him.

During the scenario, the inmates took all of the officer’s gear, including a knife, and threatened other DOC officers who tried to help, saying they would hurt the officer if they came close.

Acting DOC commissioner Marvin Seman believes his officers did well, despite this being their first time to participate.

“The scenario that was given to us today was a big one. The scenario is a hostage-taking of one of our officers. The DOC officers initiated a lockdown, isolated the area, and tried to negotiate with the inmates. Meanwhile, DPS’ SWAT team was called for assistance to breach the area and extract the hostage,” he said.

“This is the first time DOC has taken part in the Konfitma training and it was a really good experience for the whole department,” he added.

Part of the training scenario was to practice DOC’s communication skills with their neighboring department, the Department of Public Safety.

In a situation like a hostage-taking at DOC, it’s crucial for DOC to communicate as many details as possible and the kind of assistance needed from DPS, said assistant police chief Joe Saures.

“This is important because we need to know how many people are involved, how many suspects are there, weapons involved so that we can do our own planning so we aren’t going in blind,” he said.

Although DPS SWAT team did well, Saures said there is still room for improvement.

“You can only do your best if you train over and over, and over. It may be frustrating but…when situations like these happen, you’re ready. Going in not completely prepared is a suicide mission for everybody. We need to improve everything and repeat, repeat, repeat. It only gets better and better,” he said.

Sean Cripps, Guam National Guard exercise coordinator, said that having the DOC join the exercise this year is a positive direction for emergency response.

“As you can see in this scenario, they were able to work jointly with DPS to take care of an incident. We look forward to their continued participation and I hope to make Konfitma more complex for them and everyone as we increase the opportunities for first responders,” he said.

As for the next Konfitma training exercise, Cripps said he hopes to hold a larger scaled version of Konfitma.

“…After the long COVID-19 period, we wanted to allow the agencies and departments to exercise their policies and procedures so I think this is a good first step, getting everyone back online. We look forward to the next training to increase the interoperability between agencies,” he said.