Mercury 05/ACT Police Operations Centre
Ross Solly - ABC 666 Interview with Commander Steve Lancaster
18 October 2005 (0717)
Ross Solly: There's been this mock terrorism exercise and it began yesterday. It's on again today and I think again tomorrow. Andrea Close is out at the Winchester Police Centre in Belconnen; good morning Andrea.
Andrea Close: Hi Ross. Talking about things happening around town or exercises happening around town, it doesn't get much bigger than this. I've just walked into the hub of Mercury 05 here in the ACT; it's a very large room at the Winchester Police Centre. It kind of reminds me of something I've seen on movies before where there's a great big round sort of area in the middle and each chair and each space is named for a particular person from a particular organisation. They have their own phone and in front of me there are several screens, several monitors, TV monitors and a large screen. Here beside me is AFP Commander Steve Lancaster who can just explain what's going on here. Commander Lancaster, first of all let's talk about this table; obviously the round table is where all the relevant parties will meet during Mercury 05 today.
Steve Lancaster: Yes Andrea. This room is essentially where we can coordinate a lot of our activities. Now as you say it's a table, or a set of tables where all the agencies that become involved as the exercise progresses, come to the table and represent their agencies and so when we come to those decision making or trying to resolve a situation, they can then participate in that by having the facilities here such as telephones. They can also plug into their own agency computers and communicate with their own people as well. So we all get live time and real information at the same time.
Andrea Close: Ok, now I'll just run through: we've got an intelligence table, ACTEW, Urban Services, the Attorney General's Department, ACT Emergency Service, we've got Ambulance, Fire Brigade, Rural Fire and a Crime table, so these are the parties that will come to the desk today. Across from us, across the room there's a very large glass set of windows and into a room where people are beavering away; who's that in there Commander?
Steve Lancaster: It's our communications area. This is the Police Operations Centre and what happens is that we have to communicate with our Police Forward Command Post and the way we do that is normally through our radio communications and this is where the information from those out on the road or at the incident itself can communicate directly and being so close to us here, we can have that information straight away, as soon it's broadcast.
Andrea Close: Ok, now with Mercury 05 I understand that we cannot go into great detail with scenarios and that sort of thing today, but let's just sort of set the scene a little bit; where would that first spark of intelligence begin for example?
Steve Lancaster: Well you'll probably find that there has probably been a bit of intelligence that's already been filtered through but it normally takes an incident or something that occurred. In this case it was an incident over in Western Australia, and progressively that's migrated across a number of jurisdictions and the ACT. What you see here is really just a partial activation; you don't have to go to a full activation of a Police Operations Centre. If there are significant events that are occurring in another jurisdiction or across several jurisdictions, then when we can partially activate the Centre to either support them but also to recognise that we could get involved somewhere along the track and identify any linkages or anything that we might possibly put us under risk or threat ourselves.
Andrea Close: Ok, so basically a piece of intelligence can start on the other side of the country, it can virtually make it's way here -- it's almost like "the terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming", or there is a situation that is heading our way that we need to move on, now.
Steve Lancaster: Absolutely, and the POC, or the Police Operations Centre in all the jurisdictions or most jurisdictions will be starting to get their act together to make sure that they can recognise that something's on the horizon. We need to be prepared for it and then nearly all jurisdictions would have their Police Operations Centre in existence and in fact we meet every couple of hours on a teleconference just to make sure that we're all receiving appropriate information.
Andrea Close: And so that chain of information goes through various police jurisdictions and then where does it go? When it comes here then, do you pass that information or that intelligence onto other relevant departments, say the Fire Brigade or the Ambulance if they're going to be required, is that how it works?
Steve Lancaster: Yes absolutely, and you generally find if you have an incident itself that happens, is that information's coming in from all other jurisdictions - as well it's coming from the incident scene itself and it's also coming in from other sources. If you look over your shoulder here, we've got another room in itself which is all whited out, I think it's to stop the distraction, but that's our intelligence cell there and they gather all that intelligence in, so we've got the communications on the road coming in this side, we've got our intelligence coming in on the other side, and then we have all these briefings that occur in the middle here at these tables so we make sure that everyone's got all the information that they need. We can then start making decisions on how we're going to resolve the situation.
Andrea Close: Ok, now are you able to tell us about any scenarios that may come across your desk today?
Steve Lancaster: No I cannot because we're not prepped at all in relation to this. The fact that we're only in partial activation means we're just responding to the set of circumstances which have occurred in other jurisdictions. I've got a funny feeling in my blood that there's going to be something else occur in the next couple of hours so I think if you see us in about six or seven hours time, we probably won't be looking as fresh as what we look now.
Andrea Close: So even you as AFP Commander, you don't know what's coming your way today.
Steve Lancaster: No, absolutely not. And if an incident occurs within the ACT then we really kick in. In fact I wouldn't even be sitting in this POC at this stage now. I'd be in my office and if something were to occur here in the ACT, that I felt or the Chief Police Officer felt that we needed the POC activated, we would then get together and that would give us an opportunity or the warning bell for the other agencies to come in and we'd have liaison officers dispersed from here. We work very closely with the ACT Emergency Services Authority as well, and they've got their Emergency Coordination Centre where we'd also have liaison officers go out to. That way, we'd just cover off to make sure we're not missing anything and we're all working closely together.
Andrea Close: Ok, you've touched upon an important thing there. In the back of your mind and in everybody's mind who's working on this Mercury 05, is the fact that it's not real. That must really change the head space, the thinking behind it.
Steve Lancaster: Well I can tell you, I've been involved in these exercises before, and although it's not real, when you actually sit in the hot seat and particularly in the Commander's role and these roles around here, it feels very real. There's a lot of pressure, there are the media aspects that are brought into it, the political aspects are brought in because you've got to link in very closely with the Territory Crises Centre as well, and also the Commonwealth's Protective Security Coordination Centre. We have to really work close together, so although it's only in effect an exercise, when you're sitting in these seats it's very intense and very full on.
Andrea Close: A lot of manpower and womanpower is behind this. A lot of money has gone into this exercise, practically speaking what good is going to come out of this for the general public?
Steve Lancaster: What you tend to do is find out with these incidents the sorts of things which will go wrong. There's no doubt about it, they're very complex, they're very involved scenarios and things go wrong, you'd almost expect them to. Hopefully they're not too big, but these plans that we've been working on for quite some time now can be put into practice and it's important that although you go through a lot of pain in these exercises and you do make mistakes, it's important to do it here now, rather than during the real thing where if something were to happen, we'd have the experience of already having exercised them, we've practiced them and we've found out where the things have fallen down or things have worked really well. We learn from other jurisdictions who've gone through that same pain as well and we hope that when things happen, that things are really in place and we're working closely and cooperatively together with all agencies.
Andrea Close: And also, last time we had the AFP doing a couple of exercises there was some public alarm with noises and that sort of thing. Will the general public in Canberra see or hear anything today that may have to do with this exercise that they should be aware of and not to be alarmed about?
Steve Lancaster: You'll find that most of our incidents actually happen over in Majura. You'll find we're probably at the stage now that people are getting made up and made to look like they're really hurt, or accident scenes are getting to be set up or something's being sorted out, so you might see you know unusual activity around the Majura area but other than that, I don't anticipate too much to go on that will alarm the members of the community.
Andrea Close: My guest is AFP Commander Steve Lancaster. Commander, we certainly at ABC 666 learnt from the bushfires a couple of years ago just how important the media was in getting information out to the public. From a media perspective what would we be allowed to broadcast, how much would the public be informed in a real situation?
Steve Lancaster: In a real situation we'd try and keep the public as informed as we possibly can without compromising our own activities. A lot of this is resolved to our public information strategies and developed through the Territory Crises Centre. So, a lot of thought goes into this media strategy cause it's about not compromising your own but also allowing the public to know what's going on. Say if there's a State of Alert or State or Emergency or any crises or incidents going on that people are aware to some degree of what's going on, we recognise that there's nothing worse than as a member of the community knowing that there's something big going on, but not having a clue what it's about.
Andrea Close: Commander Lancaster thanks very much for that. There you go Ross.
Ross Solly: Well you set everyone off there when you said that terrorists were coming, but they're not coming. That was just, we were just pretending. Thanks Andrea and thanks to AFP Commander Steve Lancaster out there at the Winchester Police Centre. The exercise will continue today and tomorrow.
Ends//