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McALLEN — Conducting a handful of active attacker training every year, McAllen school district police officers took part in drills focused on stimulating active shooter situations to sharpen and prepare them for emergencies.
Taking place Monday at the former Bonham Elementary School, McAllen ISD police Corporal Jose Flores said nine officers, some new to the police department, participated in state-mandated courses on how to deal with active attacker situations.
Using the abandoned elementary school to set up live shooter scenarios, officers with fake guns with plastic tip rounds were placed in several situations to see how they would react and to teach officers what to do and what not to do.
Showing the officers techniques for how to deal with scenarios, buildings and victims, officers each took turns in the simulated situations. Officers were also taught how to best use equipment like shields.
After each run through, the officers and the instructors debriefed with each other and as a group to see what was done right and wrong. For many in the group, it was the first time training with the district on how to deal with active attackers in a school environment.
One exercise is an officer coming into a situation where a suspect shot a person and the officer must deal with the suspect first and then attend to the victim.
“What we’re teaching here is two things,” Flores said. “It’s working with the suspect to make sure he’s secured, the weapons secure and then providing aid to the victim by applying tourniquets or pressure points to … stop the bleeding and things of that nature. And then calling out the location of what we have to dispatch and things.”
The officers in the training also practiced their communication skills with a gunshot victim by identifying themselves, calming down the victim while applying aid and getting information on the suspects.
Adding a new level of realism to the exercise, Flores said the department used fake blood, fake wounds, firecrackers to simulate a gunshot and a speaker blasting screams like in a real active shooter for this year’s training.
“We do that that way we’ll give them some form of ‘I’ve dealt with this,’ ‘I’ve trained with this,’ ‘my mind ain’t gonna shut down,’” he said.
Training other agencies in the past, Flores said the intense drills have people freeze because they have not encountered situations like that before.
“We have loud bangs in here, a lot of dry gunfire firing blanks and stuff like that but the intensive blood being seen for some people might break a person to where they just totally forgot … and some are just, you know, go with it, like it’s not a big deal to them,” he said. “But we do that just to put their mind at ease. To put their mindset ready for in case something does happen in the future.”
Former Alamo police Chief Richard Ozuna is one of the new officers for McAllen ISD police that participated in Monday’s training.
Ozuna, with 35 years of law enforcement experience, said the training was intense, realistic and different.
“This is the first scenario where the school district is training with fake blood to try to make it as real as possible,” he said. “They really get to the point because at the end of the day … the children there, that is our future, and that is why we’re here. It’s to protect our future and to eliminate the threat.”
Asked how the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde that happened almost two years ago has affected recent training, Flores said adding an extra layer to the training, like the fake blood, is preparing officers to physically and mentally get prepared for any situation.
“I can’t speak for those (Uvalde ISD) officers on what their mind was but just looking back at the documentaries that they did … it gives you an aspect of how they felt in that situation and fear took over that situation there on them, and you have to overcome your own fear,” he said. “You can’t be taught that. That’s something you got to bring out on your own.”
Flores said he encourages other school, city and county law enforcement to invest into active attacker training.
