[B]URLINGTON — Police officers from around the state took advantage of UVM’s empty halls over the holiday break to participate in a multi-day active shooter response training.
The 20-hour program covers the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) created at Texas State University. The ALERRT method was developed over the past 14 years with the help of $40 million in state and federal grants.
Sixty Vermont officers will complete the training this week, which is taking place at UVM’s Lafayette Hall, and is being sponsored by the UVM Police Department. Another 60 officers have already completed the training, said UVM Police Chief Lianne Tuomey.
The purpose of the training is to help local officers learn tactics to prevent or diminish the impact of a mass shooting in Vermont.
“No two (active shooter situations) are the same,” said Tuomey. The purpose of the training is to give officers the tools they need to “save lives and prevent killings” if they’re called upon to do so.
There were 294 mass shootings in the U.S. this year as of Oct. 1, according to a Washington Post analysis of data collected by Mass Shooting Tracker. That amounts to more than one mass shooting per day.
The Post notes that Mass Shooting Tracker has been criticized for using a broader definition of mass shooting than the FBI, which defines a mass shooting as one in which three or more people are killed by gunfire. To arrive at the figure of 294 mass shootings in nine months, the Post defined mass shooting as incidents where four or more people were shot.
By the FBI definition, there was a mass shooting in Vermont in August when Jodi Herring allegedly entered the home of family members and killed her aunt and two cousins with a high powered rifle. Herring is also accused of killing a state social worker that same day.
Since October, there have been more high profile mass shootings including one in San Bernadino, California, in which 14 people were killed at a holiday party for state workers, and one where three people, including a police officer, were killed at a Colorado Springs, Colorado, Planned Parenthood.
Officers gathered at Lafayette Hall wore protective gear and engaged in training exercises with bright colored pistols loaded with marking rounds, so they could tell where shots originated.
“There are a million scenarios that could lead to an active shooter situation, so people are deluding themselves if they think this can’t happen in Vermont,” said Colchester Police Chief Jennifer Morrison, who was participating in the training.
Morrison said that it’s important to her that all of her officers complete the ALERRT training. Patrol officers participated in an earlier training, and now officers in administrative roles, including Morrison, are completing the training as well.
In a small state like Vermont where local police departments frequently rely on “mutual aid,” and an active shooter situation is likely to elicit a response from multiple agencies, it’s important to have everyone “reading from the same sheet of music,” Morrison said.
A federal Department of Justice grant pays for the ALERRT training, but individuals departments pay for their officers’ time while they attend the three-day training, Tuomey said.
Tuomey said she could not go into detail about the ALERRT training, but she said the concepts and practices are continually evolving as experts learn and incorporate lessons from the most recent tragedies.
UVM Police offer training to students and faculty for how to respond if there were to be a shooter on campus. They teach the “Run, Hide, Fight” response method, developed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The video below, produced by Ohio State University, describes that response.
