Every fall in the Bay Area, over the course of a long weekend, Urban Shield puts law enforcement and other first responders through real life training scenarios ripped from the headlines.

This year, the headlines were grim. Natural disasters, from fires to hurricanes, and terrorist attacks from Las Vegas to New York. For many, 2017 felt like we were living on the edge of apocalypse.

So training first responders seems like a logical idea.

But there are those who see it differently. Their take: Urban Shield doesn’t make us safer, instead it militarizes the police and now in the age of Trump, that is scarier than ever.

An audio essay on violence, and the slippery slope between the real and the imagined.