One of the unfortunate byproducts of recent times is that the unthinkable — shooters attacking our schools — has become more and more commonplace.
To counter that growing threat, law enforcement agencies have increased training on how to deal with active shooter situations, and a pair of those drills were conducted by Snyder Police Department officers this week.
At Western Texas College and Snyder Junior High School, officers were trained on how to deal a variety of scenarios. While officials were understandably reluctant to discuss exact tactical responses to such situations, a common thread that emerged in the training sessions was that the faster officers respond, the better.
“Back before Columbine, officers were trained to wait for back-up before proceeding,” said Lt. Mike Counts, referring to the 1991 incident in Colorado that is remembered as the first of the mass shootings to occur in U.S. public schools. “Now, we teach the officers that if you’re there, you’re going in, whether you’re by yourself or not.”
Counts said this week’s seven-hour training sessions also centered on room-clearing scenarios involving two- and four-man teams.
“We want to be prepared if something like this actually happens,” he said. “The whole purpose of the drills was to train our newer officers how to react in a tactical way, not to get injured and how to deal with the active shooter as quickly as you can. It’s just like everything else — practice makes perfect. These drills help the officers develop muscle memory so that they’re better able to react quickly to a high-stress situation.”
Training was conducted by Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers.
“We did something similar at the high school last year, but Chief (Brian) Haggard wanted to conduct some drills for our newer people,” Counts said. “So we contacted DPS and they helped us set up the sessions.”
While the need for such training is regrettable, Counts said that this week’s sessions were invaluable to the officers.
“The officers we have are very eager to learn new techniques on how to deal with different situations,” he said. “So I think they were excited to learn more about how to react to something like this.”
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