Police called a special team to the OTR shooting. Here's who they are and what they do.

A Cincinnati police team initially formed to manage protests has been working to protect crowds at events throughout the city.

A shooting that wounded nine people early Sunday morning in Over-the-Rhine. The police department's civil disturbance response team was already in Over-the-Rhine and rapidly converged on the shooting. Officials said the team deployed "bang balls," percussive devices used to disperse a crowd so ambulances could make it to the victims.

Captain Adam Hennie is one of the deputy commanders of the civil disturbance response team. He said the team was created under former Chief Eliot Isaac and assistant chief Paul Neudigate in 2016. Cincinnati was experiencing frequent large-scale protests in the wake the Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands of police, the local shooting of Sam DuBose and the subsequent murder trial of University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing.

Hennie said all Ohio police officers get crowd-control training in state-certified police academies and ongoing training once on the job. The department leadership wanted to stay ahead of issues they might face and leadership traveled to Seattle as part of this effort.

The goal is to provide a safe environment when people are protesting, Hennie said, and to provide aid quickly if there is a critical incident.

According to the department's procedure manual, the team is made up of supervisors and "grenadiers" who respond to civil unrest. In terms of police, grenadiers are officers who have been trained to use less lethal munitions.

The department says team members are trained in enhanced crowd-control techniques and "mobile field force" concepts. The team is usually deployed in advance of possible issues, but can also be called to situations rapidly.

The police manual doesn't detail mobile field force concepts, but this term is loaded with history. Sometimes called the "Miami field force," many of the tactics were first developed by the Miami-Dade police force in Florida in the 1980s during a period of civil unrest there, according to an article published by Police1, a law enforcement trade publication.

Old crowd-control tactics were based on military and infantry movements that dated back to Roman times, the article states. The new approach focused on quickly reacting to small problems before they got out of hand by removing violent agitators, breaking up big crowds into smaller ones and keeping groups moving.

Community dialog, professionalism and restraint were also key principles set out from the beginning, the article states, along with the rapid deployment of tear gas and other munitions if needed.

Hennie could not go into detail about the tactics of the civil disturbance response team but said the point of having a dedicated team was so each situation could be approached with nuance.

"Flexibility is definitely the key," Hennie said.

He said about 10 members of the team were working in the Main Street area Saturday night and Sunday morning. Two of the members had responded to the crowd near Woodward Street prior to the shooting, and those officers were present when the shots rang out.

Hennie said the rest of the members responded shortly after and the crowd would not move, which is why the "bang" or "blast" balls were used. The devices produce a loud noise, a flash and disperse a pepper powder in the air.

He said the team now has about 150 officers who were handpicked by leadership. He said it takes a "certain temperament" to work in large crowds for long periods of time.

The team can be deployed rapidly to evolving situations, but Hennie said in most cases the team is in place ahead of big events, which was the case on Sunday. He added that the team mostly works now during sporting events and other situations with big crowds. Protests are a "very small piece of the pie," he said.