SALEM – Officers with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department and the State Police Tactical Team took over Mt. Abram High School on Saturday for training exercises using scenarios based on past school shootings.
Sheriff Scott Nichols, Sr., scheduled the training day with the State Police Tactical Team five months ago, noting that tactics have changed over the years since the Columbine High School shooting occurred in 1999 in which 13 people were killed and 24 were injured. Since then, several school shootings have occurred, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a year ago in Newtown, Conn.
Nichols explained that, “active shooter training has been in existence ever since Columbine occurred. Before then, when an active shooter incident took place, it was the practice of most police agencies to just surround the area of the incident and lock it down like any other barricaded hostage incident.
“However, Columbine and other similar occurrences since then have taught law enforcement that every second of delay meant the possibility of additional death. This meant that regular uniformed officers would be responsible for entering a building while the shooting was still ongoing to either eliminate the threat or at least contain the threat, simultaneously removing civilians and casualties from the scene.”
Those tactics of response have evolved, he said, and may be different in rural areas as opposed to urban areas, because urban areas may have more resources readily available.
Saturday’s training at Mt. Abram was geared towards the rural response in which a uniformed officer responds with few resources, “a challenge for any department,” Nichols noted. The State Police Tactical Team guided the exercises since it has recently received updated training methods.
Although Nichols was not be able to talk about specifics of the training tactics, officers began with an hour of classroom instruction before working on practical applications. The training scenarios included the use of “simunitions” or use of paintball-style projectiles shot out of the handguns. Afterward, deputies received critique on each scenario.
Thank you Sheriff Nichols for this. It is a necessary part of in-service training that all Law Enforcement needs to have every year. With the problems in our country today, Police Officers cannot have too much training.
Very happy to see this training and at Mt. Abram High School too!
I know a few local residents were a bit concerned to drive by the school and see a parking lot full of law enforcement. While this is a great thing to do, maybe a short message on the signboard outside would have been good. “FCSD Training Seminar” or something similar would have let everyone know there was no emergency or briefing for a case going on. just my $0.02
Hopefully will never be uses, but thank you Sheriff Nichols for having all your team ready! No such thing as too much training.
Wonderful!!!
I drove by the high school that day and was not alarmed at all. The cars were perfectly lined up in the parking lot. I immediately thought. Oh, look. They must be having a class. If it had been a true issue. Those cars would have rolled in with no particular order and most likely would have been spread out.
Amen Mom