Police Used Occupied Housing Complex For Training Exercises, Firing Blanks & Detonating Grenades

ALBANY, NY -- Police used a poor, primarily-black neighborhood to practice realistic SWAT training, because it looked "realistic." SWAT members conducted mock raids on empty sections of a housing complex that had people living nearby. The drills involved police dressed in military fatigues, carrying rifles, shooting "blanks" inside the building, and detonating flashbang grenades and deploying tear-gas. Fake blood and shell casings were left in and around the living quarters. 

"We wake up to the sound the next morning of literally small bombs," said an Ida Yarbrough resident and state worker, who spoke only on condition she not be identified. "All you could hear was 'pop, pop, pop' of an assault rifle, police screaming 'clear!' I really thought I was in the middle of a war zone — and I have a four-year-old."