Posted: 6/11/2024 5:14:04 PM EDT
| Just completed 16 hrs of mandated Alerrt Active Shooter Training today. I was very disappointed in the course material it is about 50% fecal matter. The instructors were great and followed their mandated course outline on every subject. I felt sorry for the instructors having to be such false prophets but they had no choice. In my opinion if you are required endure this course sleep through it you will at least get some rest out of it. |
|
I went through it not long ago….it is what it is….tactics for the lowest common denominator. If you want to be on swat, go to swat school. Even then that has limited value until you are on a team and operational for a while with a heavy training tempo. ALERRT is just basics…and since it was adopted and spread by the .gov with big G, what do you expect? Personally I found the addition Of ICS and post engaging actions an improvement of the crap I took 15 years ago. |
| The largest BS part for me was the stopping mid engagement for you and/or any team members to self check for injuries, change magazines and check weapons and make radio communication. This was to be performed before entering a room that you have already engaged an active shooter in. I will not go into anymore of the tactical portion which I question also. |
|
Originally Posted By BLUEBOY: The largest BS part for me was the stopping mid engagement for you and/or any team members to self check for injuries, change magazines and check weapons and make radio communication. This was to be performed before entering a room that you have already engaged an active shooter in. I will not go into anymore of the tactical portion which I question also. So using a tactical lull before continuing in order to conduct a combat reload, check yourself and communicate with higher or dispatch about what's going on is BS? |
*post contains personal opinion only and should not be considered information released in an official capacity*
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
| Took it late May. Yes things are different from the past but not one mention of Uvalde in the PowerPoint. The check yourself and first aid are new. I won’t discuss the other points of it publicly here. Master Peace officer as well and this is now mandated every two years. I had taken alerrt 3 times before this last one. Instructors were awesome. |
|
Originally Posted By BLUEBOY: The largest BS part for me was the stopping mid engagement for you and/or any team members to self check for injuries, change magazines and check weapons and make radio communication. This was to be performed before entering a room that you have already engaged an active shooter in. I will not go into anymore of the tactical portion which I question also. Did you get taught to throw a flashlight or LED out of the room to mark your position for additional responding officers?  The real lessons of Uvalde are that comms are life, rifle rated shields are mandatory equipment, and that bringing too many agencies into one place leads to a clusterfuck because LE doesn't do ICS (and arguably ICS doesn't fit into incidents while bullets are still flying). What no one wants to discuss is that the vast majority of the victims were dead before LE made it on scene, and they were dead because the classroom was an easy, unlocked target. We can't get school admin to stop being stupid, but the blame damn well should be placed where it belongs. Review the video and the timeline, and this much is a certainty: If you replaced the first units in the hallway with Delta or FBI HRT at the same timestamps, they would have breached the door and killed the shooter inside of 60 seconds on scene, and yet there still would have been a double digit death toll. The reality is that each and every mass shooting is different, with unique characteristics and tactical considerations. What if your mass shooter just hits the target and goes home, like in Detroit last week? Or goes walking down the street mobile, shooting random cars like in New Mexico? What if they've brought their own small child with them as a shield, like the church shooting in Houston? Trainers like to pick the scenario they've studied, come up with the bestest most amazing tactics that they wish they could have gone and used that day, and then teach to the test. Reality doesn't care what instructors think the future holds. It's going to contain circumstances and details that render specific plans useless or dangerous. Teach how to think fast, under stress, and stay adaptive, with just the right degree of aggression. |
|
Originally Posted By WesJanson: ... Teach how to think fast, under stress, and stay adaptive, with just the right degree of aggression. I think that's part of the problem with the current generation of law enforcement, where terms like " aggression" are dirty words to risk-adverse administrators. We'd like to think that we could train our officers to be able to flip the switch and go from warm and fuzzy community service officers to top performing tactical officers, but the average officer is going to sink to their level of indifference, not rise to the occasion. A trainer I used to work with recently told me a story where a student officer didn't take their AR into an active killer scenario because, as the student later told the instructor during the scenario debrief, the student believed that the rifle gave them an " unfair advantage", as if active killer events were some sort of thing graded on fairness. |
*post contains personal opinion only and should not be considered information released in an official capacity*
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
|
Originally Posted By tc556guy: So using a tactical lull before continuing in order to conduct a combat reload, check yourself and communicate with higher or dispatch about what's going on is BS? Yea, I don’t see the downside without situational dependent info, subject contained, no firing or more murders? pause away. I only did a handful of those trainings, huge differences from year to year as time moved on. The last one was more balls to the wall dynamic. Army Delta guy turned cop was one of the chief instructors. He wasn’t much on pauses and likely had conniptions watching the Uvalde films. |
|
Originally Posted By BLUEBOY: The largest BS part for me was the stopping mid engagement for you and/or any team members to self check for injuries, change magazines and check weapons and make radio communication. This was to be performed before entering a room that you have already engaged an active shooter in. I will not go into anymore of the tactical portion which I question also. Doing a tactical reload while not being shot at before entering a room seems like a good idea, the rest of it maybe not so much depending on what may be going on in that room. |
|
Originally Posted By SteelonSteel: Yea, I don’t see the downside without situational dependent info, subject contained, no firing or more murders? pause away. I only did a handful of those trainings, huge differences from year to year as time moved on. The last one was more balls to the wall dynamic. Army Delta guy turned cop was one of the chief instructors. He wasn’t much on pauses and likely had conniptions watching the Uvalde films. Seems to me, as a civy with a bit of training, go hard, go fast, would be the mo in that scenario. Seconds could mean lives. I know that you can only go as fast as you can think, see and act, but faster seems more better in these cases. Hoping someone that's been there done that can chime in. I know we are not PD, but if it's my kids school that's being attacked I'd want to know what to do... |
Member
Joined:
Jul 2022
Posts:
656
EE: 0% (0)
TX, USA
|
I got my ALERT training pre Uvalde when I was still sworn (2017-2021 Arlington TX) and it was rather underwhelming as well. I think current training material on slow and deliberate building searches was actually quite good at the time, but there was zero emphasis on "hostage rescue" or "Active Shooter" training. I got a chance to take Kyle Morgan's Protector Mindset course last year and it was MILES ahead on that specific type of response  Protector Mindset training with Kyle Morgan This type of training is incredibly expensive and would be hard for most departments to put on, but I think it would be something worth doing regionally if they could starting rolling this to more patrol officers. SWAT won't have time to respond to these types of threats, I would almost argue this should be part of academy/in-service if possible. God bless you guys still out there holding the line. |
An Adventurer from the Internet
|
Originally Posted By Mach: Doing a tactical reload while not being shot at before entering a room seems like a good idea, the rest of it maybe not so much depending on what may be going on in that room. Part of our SOP was, as the tactical pause allowed, was to self assess for any extra holes and to get on the air and update other responding unit and dispatch what the current situation is. They cant read minds and they're holding the air for you to communicate with them. |
*post contains personal opinion only and should not be considered information released in an official capacity*
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
|
Originally Posted By Voland: Hoping someone that's been there done that can chime in. I know we are not PD, but if it's my kids school that's being attacked I'd want to know what to do... Honestly? Stay out of the way. The scene is going to be confusing enough without reports of another armed guy running through the school draining responding units from the actual thret. |
*post contains personal opinion only and should not be considered information released in an official capacity*
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
0110001101101100011010010110001101101011
|
Originally Posted By tc556guy: Part of our SOP was, as the tactical pause allowed, was to self assess for any extra holes and to get on the air and update other responding unit and dispatch what the current situation is. They cant read minds and they're holding the air for you to communicate with them. Originally Posted By tc556guy: Originally Posted By Mach: Doing a tactical reload while not being shot at before entering a room seems like a good idea, the rest of it maybe not so much depending on what may be going on in that room. Part of our SOP was, as the tactical pause allowed, was to self assess for any extra holes and to get on the air and update other responding unit and dispatch what the current situation is. They cant read minds and they're holding the air for you to communicate with them. Which isn't actually a bad idea. I've had someone shot in front of me, and several minutes later thought to check myself to see if the round had passed through and hit me. I've also watched a guy in a match ND a .40 through his butt cheek and never notice (ROs caught on from the blood stains and DQ'd him - to be fair it was pouring rain). Teaching people to air vital info with brevity and clarity is another skillset unto itself. Failure to make entry in a timely manner in Uvalde was in large part because no one in the hallway knew there were victims inside until almost an hour had passed. Why? Because comms didn't work. But how often do we see people missing out on life-and-death critical information because the radio is tied up with bullshit, or someone can't speak clearly? There was a major high-profile murder trial years ago where one of the responding units later told me that if he'd heard the circumstances of the murder on the radio, he would have (justifiably) shot the suspect later during the pursuit - but dispatch never told him that the suspect had just killed a child. Timely info would have led to a fatal OIS...which would have probably been the best possible outcome for everyone involved. |