Preparing for the worst: Agencies train for hostile public event in area school

With assault rifles pressed against their shoulders, Glascock County Sheriff Jeremy Kelley and his deputies moved down the halls of the high school towards the sound of gunfire, checking every classroom they passed. At the door to the cafeteria a man fired shots at them from a handgun, shouted and ducked back into the room which was scattered with the bodies of fallen children.

After taking down the shooter, Kelley and his team secured access for the EMTs to enter and check on the students. Then, as a team, the officers continued to clear the rest of the building.

This was just one of several scenarios area emergency agencies trained for Dec. 19-21 at Glascock County Consolidated School.

Kelley said that he has been working with Snipers Unknown Training Group for nearly eight months to arrange for this operation which is designed to help a variety of emergency response departments to work together to prepare for major crisis events, such as an armed assailant entering a school with the intent of violence.

A grant from the Georgia Criminal Justice Coordinating Council helped facilitate the training, Kelley said.

Joining Glascock’s Sheriff’s Office in the training were Gibson-Glascock County Fire Department, Mitchell Fire Department, Glascock First Responders, Warren County Sheriff’s Office, Warrant County Fire and Rescue and Warren County EMS.

“We’ve done law enforcement active shooter training,” Kelley said, standing in the hallway of the county’s consolidated school while officers were trained on room entry and clearing. “Some of us have done casualty care, where we’re doing care for patients or law enforcement officers when we could be under fire. EMS has done their mass casualty trainings. But when do we train together to accomplish the same goal? This is different because it is incorporating the law enforcement, fire department, medical and EMS all at the same time. McDuffie EMS provides our primary EMS service. In this event, Warren County would be the quickest one to us both law enforcement and EMS wise. So they’re here and of course we would return the favor if it was them.”

The training took place over three days, with primarily classroom meetings on Monday. Kelley said they reviewed the priorities, roles and responsibilities of each department, identifying the resources each would bring to such an event. They also looked at administrative duties and focused on how they might manage the incident as it evolves.

“In trainings like this you realize, hey, I need this and I haven’t had this. Or, this is the way we do things, but let’s alter it to make things flow a little smoother. We’re training together because the more you train, the better off you are,” Kelley said. “I heard it said one time that you will never rise to the level of your expectation, you will always fall to the level of your preparation. Doing this, we make the level of our preparation that much higher.”

Tuesday and Wednesday each group trained in the school itself, going room to room, learning what to watch for, how to recognize and contain hot zones and clear areas for medical teams to come in triage, treat and transport the injured.

“What this class is intended to do is bridge the gap between all public safety trainings,” said Scott Usry, training director for the Snipers Unknown Training Group. “Historically, when we go on the scene, whether it’s an active shooter or a traffic accident, you’ll have law enforcement, fire and EMS all there working together. The thing is we’ve never been trained to work together, we’re just expected to be professionals and do it.”

Usry said that after the Uvalde shooting incident, it was determined that there was a breakdown in communications.

“By teaching our guys to run the command post we are able to better use our resources, be more fluid in our deployments, be more accountable for our people and get people help faster. It’s about the economy of motion, the economy of effort,” Usry said.

All of the scenarios his team run in training like this are based on of real-life events, Usry said.

“We use the school system because this is the worst-case scenario, but the same things could play out in an office building or anywhere else,” Usry said. “We train for the worst and hope for the best.”

They used about a dozen children as role players or actors during their training, to add a human element. All of the students are actually students at the Glascock school.

Brad Amick, the owner of Snipers Unknown Training Group, was also a part of the team of instructors in Glascock for this operation.

“Right now we’re focusing on containing the active shooter. Then we triage, treat and transport the patients,” Amick said. “We want to see them managing the incident, determining if they have enough resources. If an officer goes down or if they need help, they know what to do.”

Some of the most important aspects of the training are in resource management he said, determining if they have the resources to meeting their needs, and if not, knowing when to call for what.

“Talking to (Sheriff Kelley) about what he has done in this school, I can tell you, they have a good plan. They may not have the resources to run it like a larger scale department, but they have a good plan,” Amick said.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Preparing for the worst