JBER police take aim at simulated active shooter

Published July 5, 2011
By Airman 1st Class Jack Sanders
JBER Public Affairs

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska -- Security Forces Soldiers and Airmen at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson stressed their police skills, June 24, during a high-risk response train-the-trainer course, where the group's final exercise was an active-shooter scenario.

"Today is their final day for the high risk response train-the-trainer course," said course instructor John Knipe, a mobile training team instructor from Analytical Services, Inc. "High risk response entails any type of incident that could be a barricaded subject or a hostage situation, but mainly an active shooter event."

According to the Sheriff's Office policy and procedures manual from Colorado, Springs, Colo., an active shooter is an armed person who has used deadly physical force on other persons and continues to do so while having unrestricted access to additional victims.

During the June 24 scenario, Security Forces personnel responded to an "active shooter" at the local base exchange. Upon arrival, SF members were divided into teams and ran several different scenarios where role players put the service members into different situations.

"Today they're going to respond to a facility that they would normally respond to," Knipe said. "So, we're going to have role players and a lot of stimulus for them and I think they're going to do great."

Some of the scenarios involved victim rescue, while others put the SF members into a position to remove a shooter from a situation. As the day progressed the SF members were given scenarios where they would have to rescue victims and detain shooters.
"I feel this training is extremely important to first responders, because traditionally they are not trained to go in and deal with the threat," Knipe said. "They're trained to call in, wait for backup and setup containment and get a perimeter around the situation. Now, they are all trained to get in there and eliminate that threat immediately."

The training the SF personnel went through before the final active-shooter scenario gave them the tools they needed to get the job done, Knipe said.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Zachery Patton, 673d Security Forces Squadron, participated in the course and said he enjoyed the training.

"This should go pretty smoothly because we've had a lot of time to train together and work together," Patton said. "We kind of know how each other operates now."

Knipe said his team travels to all nine Pacific Air Forces bases in the course of a year to give this course.

"We're trying to change their mindset from the traditional response, which they normally would be doing containment and waiting on other agencies to arrive to take care of the problem," Knipe said. "Now - with the nontraditional deployment - they need to act immediately, get into the situation and eliminate the threat even if that means they're just a solo officer responding."

Knipe said the importance of training for an active shooter and any high-risk response event is because patrolmen and first responders are the first to arrive at these situations, which typically last a few minutes.

"Active-shooter events are traditionally only last between two and 10 minutes, and seconds count," Knipe said. "Every second that goes by that someone's not in there acting as a first responder, people are dying and the suspects are barricading and hardening their position and making it harder for follow on first responders to act."
The SF personnel completed their exercise, taking with them the knowledge they learned from the course.

"They're ready for this final exercise," Knipe said. "They've had their training and I think they're going to do great."