The US Army has held the first missing soldier recapture training at the Sembach Correctional Facility in Germany.
The practice was conducted under the Missing Prisoner Emergency Action Plan Exercise to evaluate and upskill warfighters in tracing, capturing, and returning warfighters.
Personnel from the US Army Correctional Activity-Europe led the training. Currently, the installation is the service’s only Level 1 disciplinary segment on the continent.
Units stationed in the local area, including the Army Combined Military Working Dog Detachment-Europe, Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz’s Directorate of Emergency Services, and the Kaiserslautern Police Force, participated in the event.
Testing Interoperability
During the activity, correctional teams monitored three soldiers acting as the exercise’s prisoners as they performed an area beautification outside the Sembach facility’s containment point.
The recapture operation began when a soldier fled the custody of a correctional officer and attempted to escape.
Participants then employed an emergency action plan to catch the prisoner. It involved a lockdown scenario, the launch of an operations center, coordination with community partners, and the deployment of a search party.
“Events of this scope require that we are able to seamlessly work with multiple military organizations and our host-nation Polizei partners,” Correctional Facility Operations Chief Sgt. 1st Class Davon Watkins stated.
“We all must be able to work within the systems each party has in place, and this exercise allows everyone involved to learn how each organization operates so in the event there is an emergency we are familiar with all systems and policies.”
Serving the Local Community
The training ended with the combined soldier teams, emergency services personnel, military working dogs, and the local police successfully catching the fleeing convicts and returning them to the site.
“It is important to emphasize that the responsibility for security in the West Palatinate is not only the duty of the police alone but is a shared task that we carry together,” Kaiserslautern Police Force Spokesman Bernhard Christian Erfort said.
“The US armed forces and their members have proven themselves not only as defenders of our freedom, but also as committed members of our community.”
