Texas-side police held an active shooter training event Thursday at the TTPD Command Post near TexAmericas in order to prepare their response to evolving shooting scenarios like the ones that occurred in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La.
"We are training our officers in exterior, or outdoor response to active shooter events," said Pete Mann, officer training coordinator. Just like civilians, officers have seemed to lean toward thinking that active shooting events occur indoors, he said.
"That's obviously not the case-not just with the Dallas incident, but with Baton Rouge," Mann said. "We have had incidents where officers have been ambushed in their vehicles (and) if you go back to 1997, we had the North Hollywood shooting"
" There has been many many shootings that have either been completely in an exterior environment or have evolved into an exterior environment."
Officers were training the first half of the day in a classroom where they were brought up to date on tactics that are new for police but not necessarily new for the military, Mann said. Officers are explained the need for the new training and the guiding principals for how they will respond to issues like "downed civilian" or "officer rescue," he said.
"We come (outside) and we demonstrate each movement, each tactic and then we practice it," Mann said. "The second half of the day, we go ahead and do scenario-based training using simulations."
Mann said training for active shooters is done often but officers want to do it even more often. Training for active shooters was originally amped up after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
"Active shooter training has evolved," Mann said. "The philosophy behind officer response has evolved quite a bit and with each incident we learn something new."
Mann said they generally build on training that has already been established and use debriefs from incidents like the one in Dallas nearly two months ago that killed five officers and injured nine others. With that incident happening a little less than 200 miles from Texarkana, officers realized they needed to train more for how they would respond to outdoor shootings.
"I feel it's been very positive and going with our response from our officers, who have been through the training, I echo them in that I think we should do more of this," Mann said. "Virtually any incident-any contact we have in the field could evolve into something like this and the tactics are very relevant"
Shawn Vaughn, TTPD spokesman, said that they put the training together for all the officers, no matter what rank.
"We want officers to be more aware and cognizant of what's going on around them and be able to anticipate something that they wouldn't have even thought about three or four months ago," Vaughn said. "We hope and pray that nothing does happen here in Texarkana but we certainly want to give our officers the tools and the knowledge to know how to deal with it."
TTPD rotates officers for the training, and classes are limited to about eight to 12 officers at a time, Vaughn said. TTPD has nearly 100 officers, he said.