On Monday evening UK time Greater Manchester Police held a terrorism training exercise at the Trafford Centre shopping mall - in the wake of the real-life Paris and Brussels attacks.

Congratulations to Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan of Greater Manchester police for running a realistic exercise to help protect his people from the real thing.

The key to exercises like this is realism.   Without realism in an exercise you might as well read a book.

Realism is the reason the trademark shouts of Allah uh-Akhbar accompany the suicide Jihadi as he kicks off proceedings in the customary Mohammedan manner.

But rather than being congratulated by his citizens for his initiative and the realism of the training exercise, today Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan is in more shit than Ned Kelly.   The video of his exercise was released to the media and the realism in it is what's brought him undone.

This exercise was held because of the reality of Islamic terror.  It was precipitated by recent European experience of Islamic terror.  It was about responding to Islamic terror techniques.    It took into account learned experience from previous Islamic terror attacks; and Manchester Police should now advance the literature that helps free-world authorities keep us as safe as possible from Islamic terror.

So it's disappointing but not surprising that Muslims have attacked the exercise.   Why?   Because of its realism.   Because it depicts a Muslim in the role of a Muslim terrorist

Here is a smattering of the dialled-up outrage.

Please provide an explanation @gmpolice @RSutcliffeACC @amandacomms why the terrorist in #CTexercise was #Muslim and shouted Allah Akhbar.

— Siema Iqbal (@siemaiqbal) May 10, 2016

Spoke to @ACCGarryShewan. @gmpolice will be issuing an apology and looking into further 👍🏼 https://t.co/b3hRyg0abS @CSFUK @RabnawazA

— Siema Iqbal (@siemaiqbal) May 10, 2016

Good question. We need to move away from stereotypes if we want to achieve Real learning. A terrorist can be any one https://t.co/vQ3thEGGGn

— Dr Erinma Bell MBE (@ErinmaBell) May 10, 2016

Rather than debriefing his troops and recording the fresh experiences of the very expensive exercise, Garry Shewan has cameras camped around him and the world chasing him for a response to the Muslim outrage.

And he folded like a blanket.

Suddenly the realism that all anti-terror forces train with had gone from being a goal of the training to be "unacceptable".

A statement from @gmpolice will be released shortly but this was unacceptable and I apologise for the offence caused https://t.co/8e4L6FHVU9

— ACC Garry Shewan (@ACCGarryShewan) May 10, 2016

And sure enough, before the Trafford Centre was completely clear of cordite - out came the apology to Muslims from a police force training to respond to a Muslim terror attack because the training made the perpetrators look too Muslim.

A statement from ACC Garry Shewan following last night's counter terrorism exercise #CTexercise pic.twitter.com/n56RtYnqmb

— G M Police (@gmpolice) May 10, 2016

If police in the United Kingdom can't conduct training against Islamic terrorists because it stereotypes Islamic terrorists - what reaction can we expect when police double-tap real ones?

A part of the realism of an exercise like this is managing the PR response to the prototypical Muslim outrage as Muslims are identified as the terrorists.   With great respect to Garry Shewan, and with acknowledgement that I'm in an armchair safely away from the pressures he's facing, he failed that test today.

He could easily have answered yesterday's criticism by pointing to the reason the exercise was running - Islamic terror.   They do the stereotyping, not us.

I would hope that exercises that aim for realism like Greater Manchester did yesterday will learn from this experience and that it makes its way into the literature.  A community must recognise it has a problem before it can start to fix it.   Yesterday, Garry Shewan excused the Muslim community once more for pretending it's nothing to do with Islam.