Photo By Patricia Dubiel | A military police patrolman is one of the first two responders on the scene at an...... read more read more
FORT POLK, La. — “Exercise, exercise, exercise: Active shooter reported at North Polk Elementary School” blasted over the radios July 18, alerting members of Fort Polk’s Directorate of Emergency Services that it was go time. Military police, investigators, firemen and emergency medical technicians reported they were en route.
The first responders to the scene were two military police patrolmen. They found several casualties scattered along the corridors of the school as they began their search for the shooter. Neutralizing the threat was their first priority, so they had to ignore the many cries for help, the screams of pain and fear reverberating through the brightly colored halls of the elementary school.
The exercise was not only a test of procedures and standards — it was a reminder of why these incidents are called “tragedies,” and that hard choices have to be made when your duty is to protect and serve. So they stepped over the wounded, assuring those that were conscious that help was coming, and continued their search for the shooter. Once they found him, the patrolmen handcuffed him and began moving the wounded outside.
As with any exercise, refinement is often needed to create a deeper understanding of the task at hand. This exercise was reset after the initial response, and once everyone was back at their starting positions, the call went out over the radios again.
“We reset the exercise because law enforcement was not working correctly with the fire department and emergency medical services,” said Fort Polk DES Chief of Police Bobby Lungrin, who has been in law enforcement for 35 years. Lungrin was an exercise evaluator for the event. He said conducting training with fire and EMS personnel was essential for an effective response.
“The patrols were moving casualties outside before any medical teams were there to treat them. Law enforcement officers are not subject matter experts on casualty management and control — that’s for the fire and EMS guys to handle. Also, the patrols didn’t park their vehicles correctly. They made it nearly impossible to start evacuating the casualties,” he said. “We decided to stop and reset. Missing the mark on these two basic points illustrates why we have to do periodic training and rehearsal.”
Deputy Fire Chief Craig Wilgus, a former installation evaluator for Installation Management Command, also served as an evaluator.
“We practice a lot and know our roles, but (these exercises help us) refine those practices to turn us into an effective unit — fire and police officers working together — for the betterment of the team,” he said
After the reset, interagency communication and response were improved. The patrolmen first neutralized the shooter, communicated with incident command that it was now safe for medical teams to enter, then began moving people to one location inside the building.
“Once they placed all the victims in one hallway, we came up with a grab and go procedure: Send the triage (team) in, then the rescue teams follow and start pulling each victim out,” said Wilgus.
DES Fire Chief Bill Nowlin said some of the lessons learned from this exercise have resulted in improved radio communications, an enhanced communication plan and the discovery of a more efficient way to remove victims.
“We revised our incident command checklist to match what we were doing out in the field,” he said. “By working hand-in-hand with the police, it helps us streamline our procedures so that we can match ours to theirs and work together as one well-oiled unit instead of two separate entities.”
Tommy Bolton, DES training officer, is credited with writing parts of the Army’s active shooter response plan. He also served as an evaluator for the exercise. He said the purpose of conducting these exercises boils down to saving lives.
“The more we practice these events, the better we become. It is an ever-changing situation out there, and as tactics change we have to evolve to keep up, and to do that we have to train,” he said. “Fort Polk is very proactive. Our personnel are some of the best trained on the road today. The level of care that our police and fire provide is second to none.”
Lungrin said the skills involved in this kind of response are subject to atrophy, and as new methods come to light, training has to adjust.
“The tactics and techniques used in these events are ever-evolving,” he said. “If you trained on them two or three years ago, you will find that quite a bit has changed. As we change our tactics, so do the attackers. When an agency responds to an attack like this, there are many lessons learned which are then shared with other law enforcement agencies across the nation. From those we try to build plans and tactics to incorporate those lessons and build best practices.”
While the primary purpose of the exercise was to enhance proficiency, it also served as an opportunity to grow leaders.
“We are putting people in incident command roles who have not done it before,” said Nowlin. “That way they’ll know what to do if they are the ones here at zero-dark-thirty and no one (more senior) is here to help them.”
Lungrin agreed.
“We stepped back (from leading the incident) to train some of our subordinate leaders so that they could run with an incident in our absence. This creates a depth of training and allows junior leaders to gain training experience to manage these kinds of events,” he said.
“We want to get better and better at what we do,” said Nowlin. “Repetition is the key to muscle memory. We practice so much and work closely together, I think we are leaps and bounds above other installations. We treat the training not as a precursor to ‘if’ something happens, but rather ‘when’ it happens. We align our priorities to those of the senior commander, ensuring we are ready to support the mission when we are called upon.”
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| Date Taken: | 07.26.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 07.26.2019 10:37 |
| Story ID: | 333198 |
| Location: | FORT POLK, LOUISIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 95 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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