News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Van Buren County Sheriff’s Department worked through active shooter training last week to prepare officers for different scenarios on school grounds.
The training was designed to give officers a better understanding of school layouts and entry points. Van Buren County Sheriff Michael Brock said this was the first major training the department conducted on school grounds. Brock said he wants the training to help the officers prepare to handle a threat effectively and efficiently.
“The responsibility, it lays upon us and whether we want to realize it or not these things happen, we know it, we see it in the news, we hear about it, and we read about it,” Brock said. “We pray that it doesn’t happen here, but the burden is on us to be as ready as we can should it arise.”
The Spencer Police Department and members of the McMinnville Police Department SWAT Team joined in the training. Brock said the department tries to make the scenarios plausible in terms of the events as well as the number of officers that might be available.
“We try to make the situation, or we try to make the training as realistic as possible,” Brock said. “But we also try to respond to this training in a way that it would be a realistic response should an incident come up.”
Brock said the training was a success and already has plans to host more training in the future.
“We did have plans as we are given access to the school to do more training’s and to stay familiar with the building, and to drill together, and train together, and become better trained together,” Brock said. “But also try to work toward better equipping ourselves too.”
Brock said he wanted to thank the schools for allowing them to use the grounds for the training and the McMinnville Police Department for sending swat team units to help with the training.
