One controversial approach to training that some credit unions have adopted is mock robberies, where police act in the role of robbers and as themselves responding to a robbery. The $230 million Heritage Community FCU, headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California annually participates in a special one-night training program with the Folsom, California police force. Once a year since 1995, Folsom police have responded to calls of a robbery at the Folsom branch. This year they responded to four calls for help from the branch as part of the exercise, according to David Wilde, Vice President of Marketing for Heritage. As in other exercises, police were the robbers as well as first responders to the robberies in the four separate robbery instances. Both police and credit union participants were debriefed afterward. Wilde estimated that the entire exercise, including debriefing, took roughly three hours to complete and involved all the credit union's staff. The mock robberies took place after hours to minimize the chances some passers by might be confused by the apparent incident. Wilde acknowledged that the exercise is somewhat controversial among credit unions and said that the credit union had heard from both sides of the question over the years, but had determined that taking part each year served more good to the police and the credit union than not. Heritage has four branches in the Sacramento area and has been robbed once in the last four years, Wilde reported. [email protected]