RICE TWP. — The “Bubba” exercise went fast. Real local police officers rapidly swept through the hall of Rice Elementary School, checking rooms until gunfire rang out and a crowd ran screaming from a room they hadn’t reached. In a blur the training officers recognized the “shooter” had tried to escape by running with the crowd, and more shots were fired as he slumped to the floor.
Police from three departments have been taking “ALERRT” training for a variety of active shooter scenarios all week, and both the officers and the school administrators said they learned a great deal in a relatively short amount of time. Rice Township Patrolman Brian Stout noted officers were putting in 12 to 16 hours a day getting everything down and being ready for the next day’s session.
“This is some of the best training we could bring to the area,” Stout said of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program, a privately developed system born in Texas but adopted by the FBI and offered nationwide at no cost. “We reached out to them in June or July, and they are already here. The training is priceless.”
Response to an active shooting situation is different than most other police work, he added. One example: Police are trained to help. If they see someone on the floor they usually stop to assist. With a shooter still potentially killing others, a body on the ground must be ignored — against years of training — until the shooter is found and neutralized.
“It boils down to the basics,” Stout said. “Stop the killing, then stop the dying.”
School Principal Margaret “Peg” Foster praised the program for showing her the impressive ways a well-trained force works, communicating constantly with each other and the 911 dispatch center to relay critical information and request needed support even as they sweep through halls and rooms to locate the shooter. It’s a big help if the police who are responding already know the layout of a school, and that the staff knows how to respond once police are on scene.
“We need to know how the police will respond, and how we serve as back-up,” Foster said.
Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce also praised the program as an eye-opener, noting various things it showed him that most people don’t think of. Police are often portrayed as approaching a door by hugging the wall, but ALERRT trains them to maintain up to 6 feet of distance so they can see what’s going on inside and make it harder for a shooter to target them. Plain clothes officers responding to an active shooter scene should keep badges in hand and raised so other officers know not to fire at them. Going in as a two-man teams means covering each other’s backs.
That was the point of the “Bubba” test. After the crowd ran from the room, two officers stood between the downed “shooter“ and the room he came from, turning back to back long enough to make sure no one else would emerge with another weapon aimed at them.
Sanguedolce said the county hopes to get more of the training to more county police departments. To that end, 12 of the officers in this weeks program are being trained as trainers so they can spread the lessons among other department.
“The time to train is long before you need it,” Sanguedolce said.
“I hope this is the beginning of a long relationship with our police departments,” Foster said.
”We have to make safety a habit.”
