Chicago Tribune
February 11, 2008 By Tribune news services
TOLEDO, Ohio - Mayor Carty Finkbeiner said Sunday that he stands by his decision to stop a Michigan-based Marine battalion from holding an urban warfare training session downtown.
About 200 reservists, whose unit is based in Grand Rapids, had prepared to conduct the exercise at a vacant building Friday when city officials put a stop to it.
Finkbeiner said that more than 10,000 people would have been leaving their downtown offices as Friday's exercise unfolded.
"The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people," Finkbeiner spokesman Brian Schwartz said.

Pussies.
Why don't we just pull all the cops out of the cities because I'm sure some people are pretty scared of them.

Eh, a national guard unit doing urban operations shoulda been allowed. Its not like they have live ammunition. From the way I understand it they work Like regular military in the fact the most units dont keep ammunition on hand and they dont either so it isnt like there would be some freak shooting rampage.

Hell call in the local cops too it might have been a good joint deal where the cops could learn alittle bit and vice versa since swat team dynamics of close quarters battle are alittle different than the standard military procedures.

I can understand the fear of residents... were they alerted ahead of time?

for operational security reasons no... its standard practice.

I bet the mayor was sick of getting 911 calls...

if its a simple indoor urban combat training simulation I dont understand the problems. I can understand if its a street to street training session but in house clearing isnt somthing that would bother locals. Hell Id wait and do it in the middle of the night if I was planning it. That way everyones not working and I like working in darkness anyway

well, they need to do better planning for something like this. need to get a better feel of the town.

I agree with Mayor, war games and civilians don't mix. Now Chicago is a large town and I would thought that this could have been done on a miliatry base which would only affected the miliatry and their families.

I've seen this sort of training happen where I lived. Early one evening, I heard the distinct (to me) sound of Blackhawks coming up the river. Later in the week there was a headline in the paper about the training mission. They used the abandoned textile mills in the city for their MOUT training. Most people I heard from found it interesting, not frightening.