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Jefferson Co. Deputy Trained in Active Shooter Scenarios

Shield

Tuesday's school shooting at Marshall County High School in western Kentucky was the 11th this month.

A southern Illinois law enforcement officer is busy training schools, churches and private businesses how to deal with an active shooter situation.
Jefferson County Sheriff Chief Deputy Clint Taylor is an ALICE certified training instructor. ALICE is an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.

Taylor says the goal is to reduce the number of casualties by making people hard targets.
 
"The mad man, he may want to come in and get 30 people so he can get his name and picture on the news. Well, of course, we want him to get zero, but if we can reduce that number to three instead of 30, we've accomplished something."

He says part of the ALICE training deals with trying to slow down a shooter's progress to buy time before law enforcement arrives.
 
"These people know that good guys with guns are coming and they have a limited amount of time to inflict their damage. So, they want to move as quickly as possible."

Since becoming certified 18 months ago, Taylor says training schools has been his top priority. He says it's customized depending on the age of the students.
 
"I can tell 6th, 7th and 8th graders, 'if something happens here, run over here, we'll meet over here.' When you have the smaller kids, it doesn't exactly work quite that way."

Taylor says he offers walk through training all the way up to using air soft pistols and rifles. He says a private business recently chose the air soft method.
 
"We did the classroom and then we did three drills. The first time I was able to shoot five of them with my air soft gun. The second drill I got three. The last drill I got zero. So, they learned each time."

Taylor admits the majority of his training does not involve the air soft weapons.

The training is free and it takes between one and four hours depending on what type the client wants.

He says his biggest piece of advice in an active shooter situation is to do something...don't just sit there and become a victim.

 

As a news producer and news anchor on All Things Considered, Brad provides the listeners with a recap of the day's top local and state news as well as breaking news at any given time. Contact WSIU Radio at 618-453-6101 or email wsiunews@wsiu.org
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