The best in service class I've ever had

I just got back from what was probably the best in-service class I’ve had in my twelve years in the department. Active Shooter.

The class is based on a Columbine High School scenario where someone is going in the building shooting, people, using bombs, etc. Our job is to isolate, distract and neutralize the threat.

In the first day and a half we train on clearing a room, hall way or building and handling threats in there. After lunch on day two we get to have fun. They break the class into teams and we get to play with simulated rounds (see below). The training pistols fire 9mm rounds with soap on them. They can sting and leave a mark (blue is good guys, red bad guys) but it was fun and showed you if you got hit or if you got the bad guy. I even got to be a bad guy in one of the scenarios…they got me once! :)

The building we used was an abandoned convent and we were sure it was haunted. The SGT showed us the old swimming pool and I said this place looks like a Freddie Kruger movie. He mentioned he had been in the basement and it looked just like Freddie’s place, including the furnace. Later I remembered a great quote from Moe Howard from the Three Stooges that kinda put the location in perspective: “This is a swell place for a murder.”

During the after action review a sergeant with over 35 years on put it best, “Originally I didn’t want to come here and now I want to do it again.”



Here are some of the unfired training rounds



Here is the swimming pool...this place is haunted...but at least it had AC!



The bad guys got me twice, the good guys got me once. The blue hit was from a scenario where I was a bad guy. When I got hit by the instructor (red hits) he made the point "calm down, fifty fired rounds don't help if they don't hit the target"


Fired rounds, the brass and the ammo.