Law enforcement comes to Columbus for tactical training conference

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) —- The Georgia Tactical Officers Association is hosting its Tactical Training Conference at the Columbus Convention and Trade Center.

The conference has been hosted in Columbus for the last five years. During the training, law enforcement learns tactical skills that historically were only open to members of SWAT.

However, Lieutenant Arick Furr of Alpharetta Police Department and Matt McClung, Major for the City of Munroe have offered the training to all law enforcement officers for the past seven years.

Lieutenant Arick Furr, the president of the Georgia Tactical Officers Association told WRBL, “Tactical training is important because the responding line-level officer generally is exposed to that training. A lot of times they just get the basic in-service training at their agency,  which is just the basic qualifications.”

Lieutenant Furr further explained that the training allows line-level law enforcement officials the luxury of not having to wait for extra people or SWAT when responding to scenes.

The conference is offering 38 classes a day where law enforcement is not only learning offensive tools like combat. They are also learning defensive aid tactics like tourniquets and mental health.

The Georgia and Alabama tactical officers associations have partnered with each other allowing for a pool of training facilities, like shooting ranges. The training offered at this conference is not required and is open to any law enforcement official.

Vice President of the Georgia Tactical Officer Association, Matt McClung told WRBL,” We used to say all the time that SWAT doesn’t own the term, the word tactics. Every officer needs to have those tactics. So that’s when we opened it up to everybody so that everybody could get out there and everybody could learn those tactics, those life saving practices.”

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