Over 200 officers from different law enforcement agencies were taught to identify the home-made bomb components during a counter-IED awareness course at the multi-purpose center yesterday.
The trainer, Richard Bell of the Asia-Pacific Counter-IED Center of the Department of Defense, said the most important thing that the participants learned was the baseline knowledge in dealing with IED’s.
He said the course showed the main components of an IED and how they are put in place.
The participants were not taught how to dispose an IED, but they were instructed how to recognize the bomb.
Law enforcers should always call explosive ordnance disposal personnel who are trained to dispose IED’s, Bell said.
“They need to know what IED’s are composed of. This way it is easy for them to identify and give detail description of what kind of IED they are dealing with,” he said.
Bell admitted that some parts of the IED are easily obtained from stores on island.
What is somehow difficult to obtain, he added, is the explosive itself and the skills to put them together.
Bell said it requires adequate knowledge to “manipulate” the substance to make its concentration stronger.
Also, those who will attempt to do so will put themselves at great risk, he added.
“Everything else is just a way to initiate the explosive. So you’re dealing with a push switch which you can buy from wherever. Those components are easily obtained. It is the explosive itself that is difficult to obtain,” he said.
Police Capt. Pete Deleon Guerrero, in a separate interview, said “we need to understand that our island is still full of WWII ordnance and munitions.”
The unexploded ordnance usually found in the jungle, he added, can be torn apart — the explosives can be taken out and used in making IED’s.
He thanked the Department of Homeland Security for sponsoring the training.
“Remember the mass shooting incident last year? Nobody ever thought that that thing was going to hit the island, that it could happen in a small community like Saipan. But it did,” he said.
It is a wakeup call for all of residents in the NMI, he said.
Because of training yesterday, he said “we now know what we are looking for and how these things work so if we come across them we can identify them.”
