Active shooter training conducted

Local church leaders and other members of the community attended an active shooter training session Saturday, Aug. 15, at the Phillips County Event Center.

The training was conducted by Phillips County Sheriff’s Deputy Jorge Salas and Brady Ring, EMS director and emergency preparedness and safety coordinator.

Over 20 people participated in the training, which included a slide presentation and several hands-on scenarios.

Both Salas and Ring became certified to facilitate this training about a year ago, and they are glad to spread the word in an effort to keep people safe.

“The main goal is to empower attendees to prepare them for an event and increase their chances of survival,” Salas said.

Salas went on to say due to COVID-19 restrictions, church services are currently some of the only mass gatherings occurring. This is why the church audience was invited to participate.

The training itself comes from the ALICE Training Institute, which was adopted by the Department of Homeland Security in 2008. ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter and evacuate.

Mass shootings have become frequent over the years, and they can happen at any gathering without warning. Additionally, the speed with which these events occur shows how deadly they can be.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2012, left 26 dead and two injured in roughly five minutes. For many people involved in these tragic events, it can feel as if it lasts much longer.

The training session covered what happens in the body during fight, flight or freeze situations. The hands-on scenarios illustrated the fact that during these intense situations, the senses can shut down, making it difficult to remember details.

During the training session, participants were asked to go to another room and sit around a conference table. Suddenly a fake shooter stormed into the room with a Nerf gun that shot small foam balls. Salas also threw small flash-bang noisemakers onto the floor to simulate the sound of gunfire. Participants took cover under the table, behind chairs and in the corners of the room to avoid the foam balls that represented bullets.

After the drill, the participants were asked questions about the details of the incident. Many felt the incident, which only lasted about 45 seconds, took much longer than that. Some felt that time slowed down, and although the “shooter” was talking the whole time, many people could not remember what he was saying or, in some cases, that he was speaking at all.

Salas threw 40 flash-bangs, which seemed like a higher number than many of the participants would have guessed. Back in the original training room after the hands-on scenario was over, Salas threw another flash-bang, which to many seemed much louder than they were during the scenario. This question and answer about the details of the incident helped illustrate how altered the participants’ senses were even during a drill.

Overall, 10 out of 21 participants were “killed” and six were “injured” in the 45-second scenario. In that span, the “shooter” had been able to fire 95 foam balls from his Nerf gun.

In this first hands-on scenario, many of the participants remained stationary behind any semblance of cover they could find. However, this made them static targets once the “shooter” was in the room.

“Lockdown is a great option to start with,” Salas said, “but sometimes it’s not enough.”

Salas went on to point out that the average police response time is between 5-6 minutes. According to a 2017 FBI report, 66.9% of mass shooting incidents end before police arrive, and 69% last five minutes or less. The same report noted that on average, one person dies every 15 seconds during a mass shooting.

Mass shooters also generally have higher accuracy and fatality rates than police, and this is due to the differences in their targets. Shooters often encounter static targets hiding or crouching behind cover, while police often deal with moving targets who are attempting to flee.

“You have to be a hard target,” Salas said. “Anything is a potential weapon in a shooter situation.”

Starting with lockdown is a good time for people to observe their surroundings, orient themselves, decide on a plan and act on it. This is called an OODA loop, and it is a four-step approach to decision-making. In an active shooter situation, the goal should be to control one’s own OODA loop while trying to scramble the shooter’s.

A mass shooter typically only has the single goal of killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible, and if victims can disrupt the shooter’s OODA loop even momentarily, they can increase their chance of survival.

This was demonstrated when students were provided small foam balls to use as weapons in additional hands-on training scenarios. When the “shooter” was struck with balls coming from several different directions, his accuracy decreased considerably.

Survival tactics beyond lockdown include barricading doors with any available material, making noise, creating distractions and swarming the shooter. The odds of multiple mass shooters in the same incident are quite low, so often neutralizing or escaping the solitary shooter is the safest course of action.

The instructors noted it’s important for people who are ever in this situation to not be a static target, and to instead orient themselves and look for a possible exit. It becomes an issue of people working to save themselves instead of waiting to be saved, as that period of waiting can be fatal.

Feedback from people who participated in the training session was positive. Many told the instructors they felt it was very helpful and was a great program to provide awareness. The hands-on scenarios were specifically mentioned as being illustrative of how chaotic these events are and how difficult it can be to recall or reconstruct their details.

Ring noted that all it takes is one person to be the voice of the ALICE concepts in a potential active shooter situation. It only takes one person to have the idea to barricade a door, look for an exit, call 911, fight back or work together as a group.

Salas acknowledged it’s a privilege for him to share this training with the community, and he and Ring hope to continue the training in the future with others in the area.