Blackfoot police to hold free active shooter training

What do you do in an emergency like an active shooter situation?

If you can’t answer that, you’re not alone.

Blackfoot police said many people aren’t sure when it comes to emergency situations. That’s why the police department, and the Bingham County Sheriff’s Office, is offering free classes on active shooter training situations for citizens.

The training is called CRASE – Citizen Response Active Shooter Events. It’s geared toward teaching organizations and groups of people how to handle situations. It aims to teach those who work in, or frequent, public settings, like hospitals, schools, churches or businesses.

ALERRT is the national group responsible for teaching law enforcement rapid response. Sgt. Steve Scott with Blackfoot police said recently, they came out with some new training techniques that rolled out the start of 2018. Blackfoot will be one of the first to teach those new techniques.

Scott said an active shooter event doesn’t just refer to a person with a gun – it can be a knife or other similar situation. So part of the training will be explaining to citizens what active shooter could mean and what to do in those cases.

Scott said the training includes some videos and then explains what it all means, and how it applies to the place they are teaching the class. They will also answer any questions from citizens in the class. Scott said they get a little bit of knowledge of everything that would benefit them to know in those types of situations.

“We give them options,” Scott said. “A lot of community members have questions and they don’t know how to answer it. So by having these classes, that’s their time to get it out and find out what happens if this was to happen? What should we do? We don’t teach them THE way, we teach them A way.”

Scott said the CRASE training looks at all possibilities people may have in an active shooter emergency. First, can they avoid the situation? Can they leave? Can they deny access to the suspect or protect themselves at all? Or, if they have no other choice, they may have to defend. The classes talk about options there too

“If you don’t have any other way, we give them ideas on how to defend themselves – to go after the shooter if there’s enough of them or stuff like that,” Scott explained. “A lot of people don’t have those options and if we can give them those options to where they learn, then they’ll have the idea.”

Scott said they also talk about how citizens in those situations can help law enforcement more efficiently and quickly handle the situation. Scott said they talk about what police expect and what they go through when called out to something like that. He said they tell them any information you can get that you can get to law enforcement can help them know what areas to focus on, and get the information quicker to get help in there quicker. He said police help citizens and the citizens can help police too.

“If they’re prepared, more prepared than what they are now, it’s a plus,” he said. “That’s why we want to try and get it out to as many people as possible.”

Scott said the classes can be 20 minutes or two hours, depending on the needs. He said they won’t leave the class until all questions have been answered – they are there to make sure citizens understand and have all questions answered.

Classes for EMS will also be offered. That training will focus on AIR – active attack integrated response. The goal of that training to help get EMS into those types of situations faster to save more lives. Often, by the time EMS can get in, it’s too late for some.

Scott said Pocatello and some other southern county EMS programs would be participating in those classes in March and May.

To schedule an active shooter preparation training for you or your business/organization, call Blackfoot police at 208-785-1235. Several Blackfoot police officers and some Bingham County Sheriff’s deputies are all certified instructors for the classes.