Residents in several Southern California cities have been jolted awake this week by late-night military drills featuring helicopters, simulated gunfire, and flash-bang grenades—and local officials say they were largely kept in the dark. The exercises, conducted at empty sites including a shuttered Pasadena hospital and a vacant mall, are part of a regional training operation for special Army units seeking "real-life facilities," a military officer told the Los Angeles Times.
Pasadena officials said police were told months ago to provide security but were given few specifics and couldn't alert the public until hours before the operation. A city notice went out at 5:30pm Wednesday; council members got a text 6 minutes earlier. "This was a war game in a residential neighborhood," City Council member Rick Cole said in an Instagram video, questioning why residents received so little warning and wondering if such drills are meant as intimidation. Similar training prompted noise alerts and complaints in Long Beach, the City of Industry, and Irvine, where police eventually issued an alert about loud noise expected between 8pm and midnight. Federal officials have not publicly detailed the full scope or duration of the exercises.
Just routine, an FBI spokesperson said, per the Orange County Register. "We train on a regular basis, whether it's our dive team, our SWAT team, our bomb techs, crisis negotiators, we have many specialty teams that conduct training on a regular basis with our partners," Laura Eimiller said. President Trump told military leaders in September that he liked the idea of holding exercises in cities, per the Times, as he criticized local Democratic officials for their response to immigration protests. "And I told [Secretary of Defense] Pete [Hegseth], we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," Trump said.
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