Okla. Law Enforcement Receive Updated Active Shooter Training

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(TNS) — Pittsburg County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) is training with the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol this week.

LASER (Law Enforcement Active Shooter Emergency Response) training is an active shooter training that specializes in school shootings and terrorism involving active shooter attacks on mass population centers.

PCSO is offering two courses that last two days at the Southeast Expo Center in McAlester. The first class ended Sept. 10, and the second class is Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 11 and 12.

Deputy Ryan Dalley, of PCSO, who has taken the course to become a trainer, says the big difference in this training compared to the past is that there is a lot of hands-on role playing.

“Most informative training of my whole career,” Dalley said. Adding that the course could easily be three days because there’s so much.

Deputy Matt McFarland, of PCSO and trainer, says it’s not just a PowerPoint — it’s supported by drills and putting what is shown into action.

According to the OHP, this course addresses technical aspects of planning and implementing a rapid law enforcement deployment to an active shooter incident through classroom presentations, hands-on performance-based field training, and scenario-based practical exercises.

The target audience for this course involves individuals who respond to any type of active shooter incident including state and local law enforcement, range instructors, firearms instructors, school resource officers, emergency services instructors of first responders, and first-line supervisors of first responders.

This training program is based out of Louisiana State University and replaces a previous program called ALERT.

Brian Wilkerson, of the ODPS and an instructor, says this training replaces ALERT basically because of the flawed response to the terrorism in Uvalde, Texas.

The mass shooting in Uvalde took place on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others.

The LASER training looks at past incidents like Uvalde and points out normal patterns. Wilkerson adds there are outliers that may occur, but 95% of the time there’s one shooter and no explosives. “That shooter will either look for high body count or target individuals,” Wilkerson explained.

He also said every 30 seconds a life is statistically lost, and it takes approximately three minutes to arrive at the scene. “You can do the math,” Wilkerson said.

He stressed the importance of the training with one slide from the presentation with two short phrases. “That’s our job — ‘Stop the killing. Stop the dying,'” Wilkerson said.

Departments across the state are receiving this mandated training and it stresses the importance of all units to be trained the same way, so everyone can respond the same way.

During Monday’s training, Wilkerson pointed out officers from all local departments need to be able to work together on incidents of terrorism on a mass scale. He suggested that they make sure to incorporate a tactical frequency within their communications, which they do not currently have.