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Police conclude active shooter trainings Wednesday at Greencastle High School
The first such conducted since before COVID-19, law enforcement on Wednesday went through the last of three active shooter trainings held in the past week.
With exercises conducted at North Putnam and South Putnam on March 21 and 23, respectively, several police officers from the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies drilled on finding a shooter at Greencastle High School. Much of the point was keeping focused on their task at hand.
From Sheriff Jerrod Baugh’s purview, the officers had two bookends to guide the training. One, to his point, was a failure of tactics and leadership dealing with the active shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed, while 17 others were injured.
Then there is the shooting last Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., in which three children and three staff members were killed. But while police were forced to wait an hour-and-15 minutes before engaging the shooter at Uvalde, those in Nashville neutralized the shooter about 14 minutes after the incident was reported.
“There is nothing magical in this; there’re no exact answers, there’re only answers,” Baugh said during a briefing before the drills commenced. “Room clearing becomes an art, not a science.”
How to effectively clear areas in an active shooter situation as such, while working through distractions with alarms and the confusion in general, was the impetus for the training. For Baugh, the inspirational template was Nashville.
A response to an active shooter was put down to six key points: Arriving at the location, an officer “armoring” their body and mind, connecting with another officer, finding the shooter, eliminating them and saving the wounded.
Baugh was blunt with the first point: Officers will get out of their police vehicle and go to neutralize the threat amid the chaos. Those who will not, he said, just need not go at all.
This transitioned to being prepared both physically and mentally. Apart from donning plate carriers and helmets, officers are, or should, be aware of the threat they will face.
“When I say you armor your mind, when I enter that door and I step out into that hallway, I expect to see a person with a gun pointing at you,” Baugh said. “If you don’t at first do it in your mind, you’ll never do it with your hands.”
The next point was with at least two officers connecting with each other before moving to clear a scene. This is flexible, however, as while officers in Greencastle could respond quickly, a school resource officer might be by themselves for a period of time. Regardless, they have to move in seconds, not minutes.
Then comes finding the shooter, in which Baugh emphasized time being of the essence and on the spot. Officers can split down hallways to maximize vision, or split up between a group of officers to probe a building.
Engaging and eliminating the threat then can become about tactics. Officers should not have to enter a room but can, while a shooter could be taken down in a hallway. It is important to not stand in the “fatal funnel.”
“Given the opportunity to plant your feet and shoot, you will shoot better than you do shooting on the move,” Baugh said, however.
Then finally is tending to the wounded with tourniquets and getting them to medical personnel. Baugh related that while they should be priority when there is no engagement, that task at hand is still why they are there.
“I’m not asking you to do something that isn’t expected of you, I’m asking you to do what we now have as an example,” Baugh concluded referring to the officers’ response in Nashville.