Since Wednesday, the Riley County Police Department and emergency personnel from the Manhattan Fire Department, Riley County EMS, KSU PD and other law enforcement partners have participated in active violence training exercises at Manhattan High School West Campus.
After the exercises on Thursday, KMAN spoke with Lt. Brad Jager, Training Coordinator at the RCPD, about their work.
“The importance of the exercise is that we’re allowing agencies from around the community to all get together and work in this active violence scenario,” Jager said.
***THIS IS JUST A DRILL***
The pictures below are from the reality based training scenario held last year where officers trained for an active school shooter situation.
Be advised, this training is taking place again Wednesday-Friday at Manhattan High School West Campus. pic.twitter.com/bxbD3lENfi
— RCPD (@RileyCountyPD) July 17, 2018
According to a press release from the department, this training was focused on streamlining inter-agency cooperation during crisis situations.
“We’re a smaller community,” Jager continued. “That’s why we collaborate with all the surrounding agencies.”
The training took place Wednesday through Friday. To ensure the surrounding community was aware that there was no danger to the public, signs were posted designating the area as a temporary training site.
Drama students and other volunteers play actors to make the victims involved look more realistic. Art students also help by making wounds look real.
You can tell officers have simunition guns and bullets are not real by the blue tips.
— RCPD (@RileyCountyPD) July 17, 2018
While at the training, Mark Whitehair, Battalion Chief of Training for the Manhattan Fire Department, shared statistics from the FBI detailing the number of events akin to this training scenario. Whitehair said that in 2016-2017, 50 similar incidents occurred in 21 states. Forty occurred in 2014-2015.
“You can’t predict it,” said Lt. Jager. “It can happen anywhere from a small community to a large community,” and he went on to emphasize that the only way to truly handle these situations “is to prepare ourselves for it.”
