-Courtesy photos
On Tuesday, June 17, 2014 the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department participated in the Coastal Trident 2014 (CT- 14) maritime exercise along with more than 90 local, state, and federal emergency response agencies along the Southern California Coast.
The Coastal Trident exercise was intended to explore the homeland security, homeland defense, emergency response, and emergency management issues with the threat of a rogue vessel targeting critical port and maritime infrastructure. The exercise was sponsored by federal and private sector research funds to study processes, concepts of employment, and technology applications. The exercise represented a collaborative opportunity for federal, state, and local emergency response and management organizations to validate plans, capabilities, and increase proficiency in an operationally relevant scenario.
The Exercise goals were:
-Reinforce federal, state, local, and private sector partnerships
-Strengthen existing emergency response and management plans, systems, and Capabilities applicable to maritime response operations
-Evaluate inter-operable systems to enhance maritime domain awareness, threat identification and early warning, and inter-operable communication
-Identify future planning, acquisition, training, and exercise needs related to the integrated response to a rouge vessel incident
The Coastal Trident Exercise was coordinated by the Naval Postgraduate School, Center for Asymmetric Warfare. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deployed personnel from its Homeland Security Division to demonstrate a maritime tactical response capability to an incident involving armed individuals possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) materials in a boat between Catalina and the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. LASD boats and aircraft responded to the incident and disabled the intruder boat. LASD HazMat and Special Weapons Team personnel boarded the boat, detained the intruders and safeguarded the WMD materials.
This exercise is an annual event which is being conducted strictly for training purposes. It is not in response to any known threat to the ports or the region.
