Jackson Crews Set For Attacker Training This Week

Jackson County emergency response teams and law enforcement will participate in three days of active attacker training beginning Monday at Jackson County High School.

Public Information Director Derek Woolbright said personnel will learn how to mitigate threats to the public at large, and how to respond in the aftermath of an attack. He said while they hope is these events will not be common, preparedness is vital.

“Being a smaller community, being a small county, a lot of people think that that can’t happen here,” Woolbright said. “And while it’s not something that we deal with every day, we want to make sure that we’re providing our public with the best-trained employees possible to respond to those events when they do happen.”

Woolbright said the first day of the program will be based around civilians. He said faculty and staff from the school system will be taught how to mitigate injuries and fatalities until support arrives. He said the final day will tie the training together with live-action emergency scenarios.

“The second day will be EMS, EMA, 9-1-1, Sheriff’s Department, Police Department are all going to be together,” Woolbright said. “And that’s going to be more about the patient extraction aspect of it. Finding our casualties, setting up our command post, setting up our command structure, making sure that we extract those victims and get them the medical care that they need.”

He said he believes emergency responders and law enforcement stand to learn a lot from school faculty during the training. He said those with expansive knowledge of school district protocols can share those with emergency personnel and help them understand the best way to protect students and faculty in the event of an attack on a school.

“It gives us an opportunity to kind of make ourself a little more familiar with the school,” Woolbright said. “And then also, it’s just a convenient, for lack of a better term, place to have it when we’re partnering.”

Woolbright said while the increased prevalence of these events nationwide forces law enforcement and emergency responders to focus on it more, the personnel involved are eager to offer residents the safest environment possible through bolstered preparedness.

“Our guys and girls want to train on this because they want to be the best that they can be,” Woolbright said. “They want to keep our public safe and keep them healthy. So I think this is something that a lot of our employees have wanted to train on.”

EMS, EMA, 9-1-1, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, and the Gainesboro Police Department will partner with Jackson County Schools for the event.