This is a Drill. This is only a Drill.
The Saratoga Springs Police Department staged a joint training exercise with the Saratoga Springs Fire Department and other agencies at Saratoga Race Course on May 1, 2025. Photo by Thomas Dimopoulos.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The call came in at 12:35 p.m., a voice cackling over the police radios to report a bad actor with a long gun firing onto a crowd from the second-story balcony of the paddock suite. A dozen officers descended upon the scene.
Fourteen members of the Saratoga Springs Police Department, as well as the Saratoga Springs Fire Department, paramedics and members of the state Park Police staged a joint training exercise at Saratoga Race Course on May 1, in preparation of the upcoming Belmont Racing Festival.
The police department will have anywhere between 10 and 20 officers onsite at the racecourse during the high-populated stakes race days, said Lt. Paul Veitch head of investigations with Saratoga Springs Police Department.
Veitch, who began his career as a police officer 26 years ago, said training for the summer meet began in February and has at times included the Saratoga County Sheriff’s office, the FBI, and members of the Department of Homeland Security, among others.
John Payome, a retired Air Force veteran and an actor with Saratoga’s Home Made Theater, was among the “victims” of the May 1 training exercise. City police reached out to the organization to request HMT members role-play as victims.
“It gets us close to the real-world situation without actually being in the real world,” Payome said at the conclusion of the training, after “healing” from his wounds. “As actors, we want to give them that real world training.”