Jefferson County school resource officers hold active shooter training

CENTER POINT, Ala. ( WIAT ) — Jefferson County School Resource Officers are preparing for new school year.

On Tuesday, deputies from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office School Resource Division participated in active shooter training at Chalkville Elementary School.

The training is different from what deputies were taught in the past. Events like the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas have reshaped how law enforcement responds to active shooter training at schools.

Previously, law enforcement would secure the scene and wait for SWAT to arrive before engaging a shooter. Now, officers are learning how to engage the threat immediately.

“There is no wait time there is no waiting for backup you go you go immediately, and you respond devastatingly to end that shooter,” Lt. Mike House said.

House said each situation is different. Officers have a wide range of scenarios to prepare them for anything they might see in a real world situation.

“If you are looking for a person that may have entered your campus and is hiding somewhere you may go slower, if you hear gunshots in a part of your school, of course you are going to go as hard as you can to whatever that stimulus is, so it’s very flexible training, to meet whatever threat there is,” he said.

The JCSO is also implementing a new feature on its mobile app.

“You can correspond with us, things you need to share with us anything to prevent anything from happening in our schools can be done through our app,” Sheriff Mark Pettway said.

Parents or students can now submit anonymous tips about threats happening at their school. Those tips will go directly to that school’s resource officer. Officers say information received can be critical to stopping violence on school campuses.

Chalkville Elementary Principal Monique Stewart said seeing officers on campus training makes her feel safer heading into a new school year.

“Just like we do with our teachers when they go through training to implement things in the classroom to make sure that we are on top of it, that makes us feel extremely safe to know they are doing that,” Stewart said.

Stewart said she would also like to see other safety measures like metal detectors to add another layer of protection for students. A Jefferson County schools official confirmed that as of Tuesday, there were no metal detectors installed in any Jefferson County schools.

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