New police vocation: Teaching the public how to deal with terror attacks

SINGAPORE — A new vocation has been formed within the Singapore Police Force to educate the public on how to cope with terrorist threats or attacks as part of the new SG Secure national movement that will be rolled out later this year.

Officers deployed to this vocation — to be part of the community policing units in every Neighbourhood Police Centre — will help in conducting workshops, exhibitions and other community events to raise awareness among members of the public on the threat of terrorism, among other things.

About 1,500 Police national servicemen will make up the first batch of this community engagement vocation, with training to start this month, emphasising crowd management and evacuation skills as well as the handling of suspicious items. In the second half of this year, Police national service full-time officers will also be deployed to the vocation.

SG Secure was announced by Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam in March as part of a ramp-up in Singapore’s counter-terror strategy amid the terrorist threat hitting its highest level in recent times. At that time, Mr Shanmugam had said the movement is “sensitise, organise, train, and exercise Singaporeans, so that we can better protect ourselves from attacks”, stressing that it is not just a public awareness campaign, but a call to action.

On Sunday (May 15), details of the new community engagement vocation in support of SG Secure were shared at the HomeTeaNS REAL Run 2016 at Sentosa where Mr Shanmugam, who is also Law Minister, reiterated that the issue of terrorism “cannot be dealt with by kinetic force, the police, the emergency responders” alone. While security forces are essential when it comes to dealing with terrorism, the fact that attacks can happen anywhere means the community must know how to respond quickly in the event of a hit.

Mr Shanmugam said: “When it happens anywhere, how does the community respond? Someone is injured, what do you do? If there’s an attack (that) is happening, what do you do?”

He added: “There needs to be a certain understanding — how do you respond, how do you deal with it and what’s your own personal responsibility for yourself and then for those around you.”

Mr Shanmugam also said the Government will train people in first aid and put automated external defibrillators every two or three blocks all over Singapore, noting that pilot trials have been successful and lives have been saved.

“We want to transform ourselves into a nation of life savers who understand how to react. It’s not going to be done in a year or two years, it’s going to take time but we have to start,” said Mr Shanmugam.

Meanwhile, the Singapore Civil Defence Force said that from July this year, its Operationally Ready National Servicemen (ORNSmen) Shelter Battalion will be renamed as the Public Shelter and Resilience Unit (PSRU) as they take on new functions in community engagement and community first response. These include door-to-door house visits to disseminate information on emergency preparedness, such as household shelter management and fire safety.

One of the PSRU’s commanders, COL(NS) Tan Kheng Feung, said that with Singapore in “heightened security mode” now, preparing the public well is important.

“There are several threats around the world, especially now (it’s become) closer to Singapore so we have to teach the public that with this heightened security, we need to do something ourselves, not just depend on the agencies involved,” he said.