TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – Many Tucson residents are still shaken up after a military training exercise took place in the community with no warning late Tuesday night.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos is taking responsibility for the incident, calling it a giant miscommunication that shouldn’t have happened.
“There was just one loud bang, and I did believe that was the only one, because after that, we were just like, ‘Okay, what’s going on,’” said South Tucson resident Yvonne Narcho.
Narcho lives a few blocks from the abandoned school grounds off South 8th Avenue and West 38th Street, where the training exercise was held.
The location has been used for training before, but Narcho said last night’s training was different.
“I know we’ve had stuff in the neighborhood, but nothing like this.”
Narcho said she was sitting on her porch when she saw at least four military planes and helicopters flying dangerously close to her house.
“Never seen it that low,” she said. “Not even when they’re doing the police (training), they’re never that low.”
It’s a situation that took Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos by surprise, too.
“The only thing I knew was that there was a lot of noise, flash bangs, helicopters, personnel, lights, sirens, that type of stuff,” he said.
Nanos said he heard residents’ concerns about the exercise and loud flash bangs from South Tucson Mayor Roxanna Valenzuela early Wednesday morning.
When he looked into it, he found out his SWAT team facilitated the location with the Department of Defense to use solely for their training weeks ago.
“From my understanding. We didn’t even train. We were just there to assist the DoD in their training efforts,” Nanos said.
But Nanos did not know the training would be happening that late in the evening.
“I will not blame DoD. I will not blame South Tucson. This was on us. We could easily have said, use our location (elsewhere) at 10 p.m., I don’t understand what the thinking was there,” Nanos said.
Nanos said it’s not uncommon for training to happen at night, but told 13 News they have other remote locations, like a spot near the Marana Regional Airport, that should have been used.
“There may be a reason, tactically, that you want to do training at night,” Nanos said, “Our SWAT team may train at night, but not in the middle of the city. We just don’t do that
It’s a miscommunication local residents said was scary.
“It’s kind of frightening. Why don’t we get a heads-up for that kind of training? That’s why we’re doing this, because who knows? I could have had a bad heart,” Narcho said.
It’s also something that Nanos promises will not happen again.
“They have my word, we are looking into it,” he said. “This will never happen again. My team is equally embarrassed as I am that we just didn’t think this through.”
13 News reached out to the Department of Defense for more information on this training exercise, but has not received a response.
A similar training was scheduled for the Phoenix area earlier in the week. For that incident, the Peoria Police Department let the community and media know by issuing a news release.
According to the PPD, that training would run through Saturday, June 21.
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