(BEECH GROVE) Many Beech Grove residents were woken up early Tuesday morning by the sound of gunshots at the former St. Francis Hospital in Beech Grove.
Beech Grove Police say the U.S. Army Special Operations Command was conducting military training in urban terrain.
At least 100 military personnel were involved in the exercise which started around midnight.
Nearby residents reported loud bangs and explosions and seeing people rappelling from helicopters.
“I went into the bathroom and heard all kinds of commotion and lots of helicopters,” Blaine Bonney, a Beech Grove resident, said. “I stuck my head out the window and see one go flying by and another go flying by. They’re all circling, making all kinds of patterns.”
The Marion County 911 dispatch center was reportedly “flooded” with calls from concerned Beech Grove citizens — but sources told Call 6 Investigates the 911 call takers were also not alerted to the event, and were caught off-guard.
Beech Grove Police say Marion County dispatch was informed of the training well in advance.
Bonney said he feels safe, now that he knows what was going on.
“If you hear it’s training, and they’re out there protecting us and keeping an eye on us, it makes me feel a little safer,” he said.
The exercise drew shock on Twitter, where one user wondered if we’d “gone to war and no one mentioned it.”
Beech Grove resident Holly Tolle posted to RTV6’s Facebook page saying her young children were woken up by the noise.
“I live directly behind the hospital with three young children who were completely terrified,” Tolle wrote. “Now they are going to have trouble going back to sleep. I was informed by BGPD that all residents around the area were warned but everybody I talked to said they were not.”
Beech Grove Police said started to go door to door in the area around 7pm Monday, knocking on doors to tell people of the military exercise.
Some people said they received the knock on their doors to alert them to the exercise – but many others said they received no such warning.
One of those people who didn’t get a knock was Lisa Davis, who lives about a mile away from the hospital building. Davis said a lot of the neighbors were calling each other and making sure everybody was OK.
“A lot of people did not feel safe at all,” Davis said.
The Beech Grove Police Department’s Facebook page didn’t contain any references to the event, and its official Twitter account hadn’t been active in nearly 200 days.
The city of Beech Grove’s Facebook page also contained no mention of the event, nor did its website.
Officials said the exercise was a scheduled event and nothing to worry about.
Beach Grove Police say they feel that the department handled the situation well and that if they’d given the neighborhood too much notice, it may have compromised the training and public safety.
“Beach Grove Police say … that if they’d given the neighborhood too much notice, it may have compromised the training and public safety.”
This makes no sense.
Here’s what I think: desensitization and the blurring of reality and fantasy. Our world is being turned into a reality TV show. Result: stupefying the people.
Here’s an interesting take:
http://allnewspipeline.com/Midnight_Military_Drill_Near_FEMA_Camp.php
Way to go Deb, thanks for the info.. you to Admin…
It training all right , training to get the sheep use to this shit! Training to instill fear in the citizens by letting them see first hand combat in their own neighborhoods. Brainwashed goon doing what goon’s do best, disrupting civilizations with violence!