You stand before another police officer, your heart is pounding, your mouth is dry, and sweat streams down your face. He tells you that shots have been fired, and that children are in danger. You hear shots ring out in the building as you and your brothers gear up and prepare to go in.
Moments before, you were patrolling in your car, thinking about your son's baseball game that evening. The radio call declaring an active shooter in a school changed your life forever.
The ranking cop issues assignments, and you take up your position as the point man as your team enters the building. The fire alarm has gone off, and the strident klaxon grates on your ears as you lead the team down a hallway. You barely notice the weight of your tactical vest and equipment belt as you hear shots and screams in the distance.
Your heart cries out for you to break out into a run as you hear screams and more shots, but your training keeps you with your team, knowing that only your combined firepower can put an end to this madness.
You turn a corner into a scene from Hell. Bodies are on the floor all the way down the hallway, in numerous positions. Blood smears adorn the walls, as well as bits of things you don't take time to think about, but which will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life. Moans come from some of the bodies, but you have to get to the source of the damage before you can help them. You file the moans away as one more thing to think about later, and you will.
Your team leader calls out doorways and hallways as they come up. He announces a stairwell to the left, and your vision narrows down to that stairwell. The sounds of shots being fired come from upstairs, and things appear to go into slow motion as time slows. You begin to go up the stairs, bringing your pistol up to cover the top of the stairs, and you stumble. It saves your life as a couple of shots hit the wall behind you, passing through where you were just a second ago. You call out, "CONTACT! Top of the stairs!" as you scramble to your your feet. The head above you disappears. You take a right guard position, as another team member steps into your point position, and once again head up the stairs.
As you reach the top of the stairs, you hear gunfire and screams coming from a classroom two doors down. The new point man calls this out, and the heart that you thought could not beat any faster goes into overdrive.
The point man quickly steps past the door to the classroom and takes up position about ten feet down the hall. You step up to the team leader, put your left shoulder into him, and push him past the door as you scan the room through the window. You see the shooter in the back of the room shooting into a body, and you see several bodies on the floor, and quite a few students cowering on the floor, screaming and crying. You reach the other side of the door, and you tell the team leader, "One shooter, far side of the room."
The team leader says, "Criss-cross, GO!"
You make eye contact with the officer across the door. The hinges are on his side, on the outside, so the door will swing to him. He takes a deep breath, reaches for the door handle, and checks to see if it will work. It does, so he pulls the door open.
As soon as it is open far enough, you shoulder your way in, entering diagonally through the door. As soon as you step in, you target the shooter, who is nothing but a dark shape in the back of the room. His gun was pointed down, but now starts to swing around towards you. Your gun bucks in your hand, and he staggers. The officer who opened the door had come in diagonally behind you and is now on your left. He fires as well, and in the space of a couple of seconds the shooter is shot four times out of six shots.
The echoes of the shots fade, to be replaced by sobbing and the heavy breathing of you and the other officer. You shuffle over to the shooter's body, keeping your gun trained on him. The other officer trains his gun around the room, making sure no one else is a threat. You kick the gun away from the shooter, and check his pulse, although one of the rounds took him in the face, and it doesn't look like much was left. When you can feel no pulse, you yell out, "Suspect is dead!" The other officer yells out, "Room is clear! MEDICAL!"
For three days, I have had the honor of training with police officers from several jurisdictions who were in the Active Shooter Instructors course. I am a school administrator, so I am not taking the course, but by learning what the police are doing, I can better prepare my students and staff for the unlikely event an active shooter is in my school.
I am impressed with the professionalism of the officers in the training. In between the scenarios they run, they joke around with each other almost like teenage boys. There is a sense of camaraderie between them that I haven't seen since leaving the Army in 1993. After each scenario, they gather together and go over what went right and wrong. They are brutally honest with each other, knowing that they have to be, to be prepared to handle whatever evil they may be called to take care of. In the scenarios, I play one of the "bad guys". My Infantry training helps me to be as difficult a foe as possible, as I know that's what they want, and need. Sometimes I play a hostage, or a victim. Sometimes I am a lone bad guy, sometimes I'm one of two.
They don't play a lot of "what if" games. They train to historical realities, and probabilities. Resources are scarce, so they don't waste them on scenarios highly unlikely to happen. The use of simunitions adds an element of reality by raising the stress levels. When shot with one, they sting. You also have the psychological impact of seeing someone trying to hurt you, and the adrenalin kicks in. This affects your aim. In one scenario, 12 shots were fired by the good guys, with two hitting their target. Police officers need to psychologically inoculate themselves to this, and the physical stress of these types of situations. We were in an air-conditioned school, and yet officers were sweating after each scenario.
You want to know what lessons were learned in Columbine; Bailey, Colorado; Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania; and Virgina Tech? Attend a training session like this and see how the police learn from these events and prepare for the bad guys, who also learn from these events.
The "thin blue line" may be thin, but it is a strong one. I, for one, am glad they do what they do. I am also glad for the men and women who train them. Thanks to all the men and women of law enforcement, for training like this, and thinking the unthinkable.
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