Law enforcement participate in active shooter drills

HALLSVILLE – Our news partner, KETK, reports that several police departments from all over East Texas had access to an abandoned school to prepare for potential threats and school shootings. Learning to work together, just like they would in real world scenarios.

“We’re finding now that if you carry a gun and badge, everybody needs this,” Longview PD alert instructor sergeant, Drew Allison said.

Mandated by the state, the training lasted 16 hours with over two days of intense instruction. The main lesson aimed to stop the threats as quickly as possible.

“It trains first responders and stops killing, stops dying…[teaches] medical, direct threat care, and then also immediate causal evacuation care,” Allison said. “We look at the bigger picture of how do we take command and then how do we push it to a crisis side?”

Several techniques were learned for isolating, distracting and neutralizing an active shooter.

“It’s imperative that we’re prepared versus waiting until it’s time we’re waiting until an incident occurs,” Longview PD Private Investigator Ladarian Brown said. “It’s best to kind of give you and everybody around you the same training. That way we can all run the same system, and everybody kind of knows what’s supposed to happen.”