The call could be heard loud and clear through the radio: “Shots fired inside the school.”
There was an “active shooter” inside and Cherokee County police officers could not waste time.
The four officers quickly passed through the hallways, reaching a classroom and taking down the “suspect.” Things ended peacefully. The training scenario was over.
“We have to keep up with the advancement in the training; that’s what we need to keep practicing to get better,” Capt. John Gunning, director of training for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, said after the recent exercise. It had already been planned before the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York, but took on fresh urgency in their wake.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The sheriff’s office and Cherokee County Fire and Emergency Services worked together to train firefighters, EMT and deputies. The goals are simple: neutralize the suspect, then aid the victims. Various scenarios have officers encountering “victims” who are fleeing, who have been injured, or worse.
“We want to be prepared for any event that may take place,” Gunning said.
Gunning said the 2021 spa killings, which took place in Cherokee and Fulton counties, showed that a mass shooting can happen anywhere. Future training sessions will take place in government or office buildings, he said.
“We had an integrated response with different agencies at the spa shootings,” he said.
Atlanta Police officers trained recently at the Fox Theatre.
“Any time we do reality-based training or scenario-based training, one of the goals is to create a scenario that is as like a real-world situation as possible, so they face all the stressors, all the difficulties that they would (face) in a real-world situation,” said Paul Merritt with the Critical Training Unit at the Atlanta Police Academy. “There are a lot of goals that we have but our ultimate objective is to save lives.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The Fox training was conducted along with the Atlanta Fire Department. Such training is available to any APD officer interested once a month.
“When you look at any scenario, communication would be your biggest challenge. By creating these stressful situations and having them practice, it is what keeps building these mental blueprints so they are relaying the correct information to the incident commander,” Merritt said.
In 2021, there were 61 active shooter incidents across the U.S., according to the FBI, up from 40 in 2020. An active shooter is defined by the FBI as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area”.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Active shooter incidents have been trending upwards in the U.S. for past five years, with most taking place in areas of commerce and open spaces, according to the FBI. Houses of worship are not immune. In 2017, a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas left 26 people dead and 22 wounded, making it Texas’ deadliest mass shooting and one of the deadliest in U.S. history.
Last month, one person was killed and five injured after a mass shooting at the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California.
The Georgia Sheriffs’ Association and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia have been working for years on a training seminar branded “Protecting Houses of Worship.”
“We live in a day and age that you have to consider this kind of stuff, you never really had this issue before,” said Brent Loeffler, director of training at the sheriffs’ association. “Within the last 10 to 15 years, it just seems that’s it’s becoming a little bit more prevalent.”
This year, seminars have been held in Macon and Athens and will later be held in Columbus and Valdosta.
“There is really no right answer, it just really depends on the structure, depends on the church, where they are at, what kind of resources do they have,” Loeffler said. “Some of these locations will actually create a plan and others will have some difficulty. It’s just good practice, safe practices they need to look into for creating some kind of security team and having different degrees of security.”
On June 16, a man entered St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama shot and killed three people. A church member rushed the gunman, struck him with a chair and held him until police arrived. In 2019, a gunman shot and killed two people at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas before being shot and killed by a volunteer security team member.
Loeffler said it’s important for law enforcement to train security team members.
“We train officers to not wait. They are to immediately push the fight towards that bad (person) and make them stop what they are doing."
Since the Uvalde shooting, Georgia Sheriffs Association president Terry Norris said he has spoken to sheriffs around the state.
“My first deputy on the scene better go in,” is their shared sentiment, he said.
Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds released a video and sent out a letter reminding deputies of their duty to respond immediately.
“I ask you to take a moment to again ponder this scenario. If you have any reservations as to your ability to perform this duty please notify me immediately,” Reynolds said on the video.
The Uvalde school shooting is still under investigation but authorities have said as many as 19 officers waited in the hallway for more than 45 minutes at Robb Elementary School as students trapped inside a classroom with the gunman repeatedly called 911. On Tuesday, the response to the shooting was called an “abject failure” by Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
McCraw testified police had enough officers on the scene to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building and would have found the door where he was barricaded in unlocked if they had bothered to check.
“Active shooter situations go beyond the school setting, it’s any setting really,” Norris said. “If there is an active shooter, the protocol for law enforcement is first on the scene goes in.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
During a recent drill at Venetian Hills Elementary School, an Atlanta tactical field officer entered the abandoned building to confront an “active shooter” inside the school. The officer quickly located the “suspect” and took him down, with little to no hesitation, as he was trained to do.
The exercise was designed for tactical field officers to train a single officer responding to an active shooter at a school, following the Uvalde shooting.
“We want them to make decisions under stress and just depending on the environment, work through it,” Sgt. Stephen Krieger with the Atlanta Police Academy said. “We train our officers not to wait. They are to immediately push the fight towards that bad (person) and make them stop what they are doing.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Actual incidents may involved a solo officer responding without the immediate help of backup officers or a SWAT team, but there is no time to wait, Krieger said.
“When there is active threat, we want to make sure they are going in immediately and not waiting on other officers,” he said. “If there comes a time where they don’t know if their an active threat or they have that suspect barricaded in a room, we want them switching gears to operate with our other resources. We are pushing no hesitation. The more time we wait to go in, the more potential there is to harm somebody.”
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