The LaGrange, Peachtree City and Fayetteville police departments held their quarterly basic training in an empty rental house on Alford Street Friday.

Lt. Dale Strickland with LPD said the day-long training focused on room clearing in hostage situations.

“We’re working on barricaded subjects, and we’re addressing hostage rescue type incidents,” Strickland said.

“I have role players, one playing the hostage taker, another the victim, and [the other department] will go in as a team and address them. Then [the LaGrange police] team will go in and address the occurrences inside, and then they will blend together and work together.”

The three departments regularly work together quarterly, he said.

“We train with each other four times a year, and we have a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies where we assist one another,” he said. “We’ve had them for a number of years and this is just a part of our quarterly training.”

Strickland said training with the other departments is important in case local law enforcement get in situations that involve more officers.

“If we were to get a big situation or a big home and we needed to get the two teams together, then we can put the two teams together,” he said. “We’re kind of their back up, and they’re kind of our back up in case we get in a scenario where we need extra team members.”