Police Go To School

BENNINGTON - With school shootings in the public eye following several tragic incidents, local police want to make sure they are prepared for such a crisis. Tactical training at MAU On Wednesday, police cleared rooms and hallways with weapons drawn at the Mount Anthony Middle School, searching for imaginary suspects during a training exercise put together by what has been called the best tactical unit in the world: the Los Angeles Police Department Swat Team. "LAPD is at the forefront of any tactical thing, worldwide. Military units train with them. They're very up to date with what's going on because they're involved in them. They developed what we're going to learn today," said Sgt. Michael Aamodt, team leader of the Vermont State Police Tactical Team.

Aamodt and several members of the tactical team, all of whom have trained with the LAPD team, are now passing on their knowledge to local agencies all around the state. "We got this training a couple different ways. We had some officers from LAPD come in and train the tactical unit and some of the training was from National Tactical Officers Association classes we went through. We combined it all and this is what we came up with," said Aamodt. Using unloaded sidearms, members of the Bennington Police Department, Winhall Police Department, Manchester Police Department and troopers from the Vermont State Police barracks in Shaftsbury, received instructional training from the Vermont State Police Tactical Team on responding to an "active shooter" in a school. "We're training them in how to clear a school in the safest way possible," said Aamodt. "Worldwide, this is not uncommon. We had it in Essex. Vermont is not immune to it," he said. Last August, a gunman ran into an Essex elementary school, fatally shooting one person and wounding two others. Although students were still on summer break, about 30 teachers and staff were in the building. The VSP tactical team, training nearby, was able to respond to the scene quickly. But such a quick deployment of the team is rare, said Aamodt. With 18 members from all over the state, it can take up to two hours for the entire team to assemble. As a result, local agencies are typically the first to respond, he said. "In the unfortunate event something did happen, everybody that's going to show up is going to be from different agencies. You're not going to have one agency," said Aamodt. "You're going to have a mix of municipal people, state, fish and wildlife, liquor control — going up to these events. We're putting on these events so that everyone is on the same sheet of music." The training also focuses heavily on a shooting at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colo., where two teenage students shot 12 fellow students, a teacher, and wounded 24 others, in April 1999. "We're going to go over a lot of the school shootings. All of this came about as a result of Columbine. There was a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking," said Aamodt. "We're going to use Columbine quite a bit today — what went right, what went wrong and what we learned from it and why we're doing what we're doing today." Lt. David Notte of the Vermont State Police, who is the commander of the Shaftsbury barracks, said it was important for troopers under his command, as well as for local officers, to be able to handle a crisis situation. "Over the past eight years, we've learned from the school shootings that happened at Columbine and all over the country. We have to train differently. We no longer have the luxury to wait for a tactical team to arrive on scene," said Notte. "The fact of the matter is, in rural Vermont we do have to work together. We're out there doing the same job. We're just not big enough to rely solely on the state police," said Notte. After a classroom session reviewing tactics, procedures and past incidents, officers took to the halls to test their skills. "If there's an active shooter in the school they're going to be doing something. If they don't know where the shooter is they're going to be doing something different. ... Depending on what we tell them, they're going to have to execute it," said Aamodt. "We're going to get them moving. Their blood pressure is going to get up. They'll be sweating a little and they're going to earn their pay today." Sgt. Camillo Grande of the Bennington Police Department said training benefited the BPD's local special response team. "The Bennington Police Department has been training with their special response training for a couple of years now. What it basically did was allow us to hone our skills and brush up some things," said Grande. "The training was fantastic. It's always great to attend trainings like that and to train with other departments and officers." Although the training focused mainly on a school incident, the skills practiced can be used in many different types of crisis, said Aamodt. "What they're going to learn here they can use in any large building, not just a school. If it's a factory, the basic principles are going to be the same," he said.