The Permian Basin Law Enforcement Academy (PBLEA) has frequent training sessions for officers in area law enforcement agencies. And today they conducted an Active Shooter Training session at the shoot house on the grounds of the Midland Police Department shooting range. (Click here to see the photos.)
One of the team leaders, MPD patrol officer Brad Robertson, explained that in training for something new the steps can be analogized as crawl, walk, trot, and finally, run. Today's session was the trot stage. Future courses might include a medical situation, an improvised explosive device, and someone shooting back.
"Inoculation" was the buzzword in today's training session. That's inoculation as in getting an officer accustomed to the unpredictability of a dangerous situation and the possibility of facing gunfire. Retreat is usually the most common reaction when shots are fired. So the trainers used blanks to help increase the level of stress in the trainees. And if the trainee's first reaction is to hesitate, then after a few times he/she becomes as accustomed as someone can get to the idea of someone shooting at them.
The trainees were from the Midland Police Department, the Midland College Police Department, and the Department of Public Safety. And a team might be composed of people from each of those departments who might be strangers to one another. Then if a real event were to occur the officers from various departments would all have had the same training and could work together well, hopefully.
The MPD is currently under scrutiny from citizen groups due to the recent shooting by the police of a suspected murderer. Officers often have only a split second to make a decision, and rightly or wrongly, sometimes people get killed. And from the news accounts of the recent shooting death of the murder suspect, it was one of those ambiguous situations in which the officers didn't want to risk their own lives where the suspect appeared to be pointing a gun at them even though he turned out to be unarmed.
Today there were targets representing bad guys/gals and good guys/gals. So look at the targets in the photos and ask yourself whether the person in the target is armed with a handgun. Look at the hands. If there's a gun pointed at you, then shoot. If it's ambiguous, then there's a big the risk. And there's not much time to think it over.
And finally, be sure to check out the rules on the sign in photo #4. Rule number 3 says: "Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target." Now scroll down to numbers 13 , 14 , 15 and 16 where you'll see those rules put into practice as Officer Robertson (gray shirt, camo hat), enters a room. Initially he has his finger off the trigger, but when he spots the target his finger goes into the trigger guard. Then it goes out again once the target has been neutralized.
By the way, I was standing outside looking in the window. The red tape in the handguns indicates that the guns had been unloaded, inspected and marked.
How do you get to see all this cool stuff???
Posted by: Janie | May 27, 2007 at 11:16 PM