Law enforcement officers train for rapid deployment
Four police officers, weapons raised, pass through the door of a second-floor classroom in Penn State Fayette’s Biomedical Technology Center. They pair up with backs together and take one step at a time into the room, looking for a shooter.
They have a laboratory door, a podium, a long table, student desks and various nooks and crannies with which to contend.
The shooter hides at the end of the table. Slowly working their way into the room, the officers find their suspect before he has a chance to react.
The police officers are real. The setting is real. The weapons are plastic and the shooter is a continuing education instructor.
Instructor John Hartman has the group repeat the drill over and over again, hiding each time in different parts of the room and pointing out mistakes.
“This class is rapid deployment for critical school incidents. This is for patrol officers when they are responding to school shootings and there is an active shooter in the school. This is about what the officer is to do to stop what’s going on and to rescue the victims,” said master instructor Kirk Hessler.
Penn State Fayette offered the class through funding from the Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission in Hershey.
State-certified police officers are required to take so much training, but Hessler said the two-day class at Penn State was something extra.
The students were split into groups that covered all of the building. They worked on drills Thursday and went through scenarios Friday.
“We’re giving them an idea of the sort of tactics to move down hallways the safest and most effective way, how to enter a room, what they need to know to search and how to rescue the victims,” Hessler said. “It sounds simple, but you have to work with others. A lot of departments are small and they would have to work with neighboring departments. Hopefully, they would be able to work together.”
Hessler, a full-time officer with North Franklin Township who also works with Belle Vernon police and the SERT teams in Washington and Fayette counties, said this class may have concerned school incidents but the techniques are useful in other settings.
“The goal is that they will be able to assess the situation when they arrive and decide if rapid deployment is called for. They will be able to put together a rescue team, enter a building and start the process of rescuing,” he said.
Instructor Carl Nagy, newly retired as deputy chief of McKeesport police, said the Biomedical Technology Center was an especially good place for the training because of its different types of rooms, stairways and hallways.
Nagy said he has participated in several hundred hours of training a year and intends to continue after retirement.
He said that once officers meet their yearly mandatory training, it is up to the individual departments to offer extra instruction.
“This is to take up where their regular updates leave off,” Nagy said. “It’s very important because most departments can’t afford to do this on their own.”
Nagy said the officers may never need to use the rapid deployment, but the class could give them the hands-on exposure to the techniques.
“You can watch all the training videos and everything else, but it’s different when you actually do something,” Nagy said.
Penn State Fayette has offered training courses for several years for constables in a 10-county area, and it expanded the courses to other types of law enforcement officials, giving a municipal police officers training course for the first time on campus last December. Similar courses have continued under the auspices of Penn State Fayette at various locations.
Ted Mellors, assistant director of continuing education and project director in law enforcement training, said the courses have become popular and the campus has compiled a pool of 40 instructors with different expertise.
“We anticipate we will be doing these classes throughout southwestern Pennsylvania for some time to come,” Mellors said. “Over recent years, we’ve seen more interest in such training.”
Fourteen officers took the 16-hour critical incident training Thursday and Friday, representing Shaler Township, the Fayette County sheriff’s office, Perryopolis, Belle Vernon, McKeesport, Kittanning, Latrobe, Connellsville and Brentwood.