By Emma Martin
Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training
It’s called ALLERT for short. And you might have read about it but didn’t know what it was all about.
An all-SPC email went out on Monday, March 25, from Kenton Burns, professor of Law Enforcement Technology. It began with: “We will be conducting training this week at the ALERRT Regional Training Center @ SPC (Reese Building #3).”
The email explains the training would be happening for three days.
It continues with, “There will be simulations of events that involves students/officers carrying handguns/rifles and shooting simunitions (paintball) and also using blanks.”
Kenton Burns says “simunitions” are made to act as an actual bullet that could be used in a similar firearm to what law enforcement uses. He says they are still fired out of a gun making for realistic training, but instead of a lead bullet on the end, they have a paint marking capsule.
The March all-SPC email finishes with, “Most of this will be taking place in the northeast part of campus as this training is preparing officers for an ‘exterior’ response to active shooter events.”
The final sentence of the email asks people not to be “alarmed” if they see individuals with firearms and other equipment. Without this kind of warning, a training event like this one might well be…alarming. It looks real, and it’s meant to look and feel that way too.
Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, or ALERRT, is designed to ensure that all first responders know how to handle an active shooter situation.
After the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in late May of 2022, the Office of the Texas Governor announced a requirement that every licensed police officer in Texas must complete 16 hours of ALERRT training every two years.
“The goal of it basically is to try and stop the shootings and stop what happened at Uvalde,” says John Barnes, assistant professor of criminal Justice at South Plains College. “Provide protocol training for officers to be confident enough to go in there and search for those individuals, try and stop the killing, stop the shooting. Basically, protect innocent lives.”
Barnes himself completed the required 16 hours of ALERRT Level 1 training last year. Then, he says he completed an additional 24 hours of training. That means he now qualifies as an ALERRT instructor.
“So, I can instruct the course,” he says, “and now we’re going to implement that into our law enforcement academy so they’re going to get Level 1 training before they even graduate from here.”
Building #3 at the SPC Reece Center campus is specifically used for ALERRT training. In June 2023 a ribbon cutting ceremony officially earmarked the building as a “regional” training center. A news release announcing the ceremony explained, “SPC is partnering with Texas State University to establish the first active shooter regional training center in Texas. South Plains College will host multiple training courses each quarter to help promote and enhance training for all peace officers in the region to better protect schools and communities from active shooter threats.”
In February, Barnes arranged for us to observe one of the ALERRT sessions in Building #3.
On this day 30 men and women trainees were gathered. Game Wardens, SWAT officers, security guards and many others were all in the same training. Some wore uniforms but most were in civilian clothes with their badges attached.
Trainees as well as instructors held fake firearms to simulate as close to a real situation as they could. They practiced room entries as if an active shooter were inside a classroom and that classroom is full of innocent students. As they run through all the simulations, the instructors show them how to do it correctly and give feedback.
There were five instructors who would split the trainees up into smaller groups for more one-on-one attention.
“There’s different levels,” Barnes says. “They teach breaching, mass casualty where you go in and they teach you how to apply a tourniquet so triage and help people who are wounded. How to safely get people out of an active situation if you need to.”
They would start specific drills slowly and break down the drills’ different components. Then they would run it fast to be sure they had it down well.
The trainees had to carry around a tourniquet because instructors gave random time challenges. The point of it was to get a tourniquet in place within 20 seconds of being shot. After 20 seconds of bleeding heavily, instructors say, a person will start losing consciousness.
One of the last topics covered on this day had to do with explosive safety. This was an emotional section, it seemed, for everyone in the room. The instructors explained how most bombs used in a threat such as a school shooting is an Improvised Explosive Device or IED.
Part of what makes IEDs so dangerous, the instructors explained, is the fact that they are improvised. They can have a number of different materials inside them to cause havoc. A big part of IED training drills is about avoiding and deflecting the device.
ALERRT training has been in place since the early 2000s. The ALERRT.org site explains, “The ALERRT Center at Texas State University was created in 2002 as a partnership between Texas State University, the San Marcos, Texas Police Department and the Hays County, Texas Sheriff’s Office to address the need for active shooter response training for first responders.”
Barnes says SPC has one of the training centers for the entire state. He says there have probably been more than 300 people through the training so far. And it’s different levels of training.
In the end, it seems, the more realistic the training the better. Even if it does look “alarming”.
“Uvalde, we can’t have that,” Barnes says. “So, what we’re going to do is provide this training from command staff all the way to your uniform officers and everyone’s going to have the same training. So, everyone knows how to do the exact same thing.”
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