UNC Police Exercise Alarms Students and Staff, Leads to An Arrest

“As I was driving through this, I saw what looked like paintball masks to me. And, having been a military police officer in the past, and also having played paintball, I was like, ‘something’s weird.”

Amber Mathwig was leaving work at the end of the day Wednesday when she witnessed a scene that would give many people pause.

Near her office in Odum Village where she works as a Student Veterans Assistant Coordinator for UNC, Mathwig said she saw dozens of uniformed officers wearing paintball masks and several armed with rifles.

“I had been walking around all afternoon, I was tired. I sat down on the stairs in front of 209 Branson Street, and as soon as I sat down I heard, ‘pop, pop, pop,’” she said. “Which I very much knew was the sound of ‘simunition’ rounds.”

Mathwig, who served in the Navy for 10 years and had carried out training exercises during her service, recognized the sound of the special type of ammunition used in training simulations. The rounds have a lower velocity than real ammunition, are marketed as non-lethal and can be fired by real weapons.

Mathwig called the training unsafe, saying that students were in several of the buildings surrounding the ongoing exercises and unaware of its going on. She said there was no notification ahead of time that the training was scheduled.

“You’re not going to fire rounds in a neighborhood of people, and this is a neighborhood of people,” she said. “My center serves students, students who have children. Children who often come to sit at the center to do homework or to run around. We just happened to be lucky that yesterday afternoon was a very slow day and there weren’t a lot of people there.”

UNC released a statement Thursday saying that UNC Police were conducting an exercise involving an active-shooter scenario in an abandoned building in Odum Village. The release said “training exercises provide UNC Police with valuable learnings about our efforts to keep the campus safe.”

Mathwig says after her presence stopped the training, UNC officers asked her to leave. She refused, in order to stop what she called an “the extremely unsafe” exercise. She was arrested and accused of trespassing and resisting, delaying or obstructing a police officer. Thursday she said she was placed on “investigative leave” with pay by her department.

“Just the entire attitude that they thought they could hold a ‘simunition’ training round exercise in an occupied area, much less next to students, is so troubling.”