By Rupert Howell
An active shooter training was unannounced and planned before last week’s massacre of five police officers in Dallas; but the events in Texas may have added to the intensity the following morning at Batesville Middle School.
About three dozen law enforcement officers converged on the school after the call went out to first responders representing Batesville Police Department, Panola County Sheriff’s Department and their drug task force, Panola County Emergency Management and instructor Marion Pearson with Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks.
The scene was complete with shooters embedded in the building, wounded victims and graders who made notes of errors and omissions that when corrected may save lives in an actual situation.
Some of the responding officers were still in civilian clothes when the call came but all donned protective gear including vests and helmets and were heavily armed.
“Think about it,” BPD Chief Tony Jones told the group afterward during a de-briefing session. “Every day you come to work it can happen (an active shooter situation). You think you don’t want to shoot somebody, but you’ve got to react.”
Panola County’s Emergency Management Director Daniel Cole gave the overall exercise a thumbs up but noted it took 18 minutes from the time the call went out to initial entry into the building. “That’s a long time,” he said.
“They did a good job seeing how it’s been over a year since they’ve done this,” Marion Pearson, who is a certified instructor in active shooter training, said. He has been involved in numerous training sessions and actually had several whelps on his back from serving as an impromptu bad guy during the exercise.
Some of the responding officers were armed with simulated rounds of ammunition (like a 9mm paintball) according to Pearson who indicated he was glad to sacrifice his body for a training exercise that might later save lives.
Pearson’s critique of the exercise focused on safety issues and noted the time lapse between the call out and first entry was partially due to officers clearing weapons of live ammunition.
“Nobody is going to let you train in their facility if you have a serious accident,” he explained. Pearson has also conducted hundreds of hunter safety courses through his position with MDWFP.
He reminded the group during debriefing that active shooting scenarios were all different, “(There is) no right or wrong way (to react), it’s the way you practice it.”
“All in all, it went great,” Cole told the first responders. “We need to do more of these (active shooter trainings)—four or five a year instead of one.”
At the end of the debriefing officers formed a tight arm-in-arm huddle and prayed for their safety and for the families of those who had died the night before.