Toronto Police officers will run through a series of emergence exercises in the Distillery District Sunday, days before the opening of area's wildly popular Christmas Market.
An alert from a Distillery condo warns that residents may hear elevated voices while officers run through scenarios between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.
"The officers participating in the exercise will be armed with plastic weapons and the actors playing the “assailants” will be armed with weapons that will be using blanks (no bullets)," the memo reads.
Toronto Police const. Caroline de Kloet tells NEWSTALK 1010 Sunday's events are just part of regular divisional training for officers. She downplayed any link between the training and the Christmas Market that opens November 15.
Public safety analyst and former OPP commissioner Chris Lewis tells NEWSTALK 1010 the location could be a coincidence or be an effort to familiarize officers with a space where there are a lot of people in one place.
"If Toronto Police had areas that were potential for areas for bad things to happen, and we're seeing it happen all over North America...if they're not preparing for those sort of things, they're not doing their job," Lewis says.
The Distillery District attracted 675,000 visitors in 2017. This year's edition runs Tuesday through Sunday, November 15-December 23.