Pensacola police thrown into active shooter simulation to test skills

Editor's note: The video footage and audio in the story can be disturbing for some viewers. The video demonstrates a portion of the Pensacola Police Department active shooter training in which all involved simulate a real active shooter threat .

In almost every workplace, employees undergo routine training throughout the year − usually from the comfort of their office chair.

But officers at the Pensacola Police Department don't have the luxury of being comfortable during some of their training, including during this week's active threat training in which every uniformed officer will participate.

"This was formerly called active shooter training, but because there can be more threats to people in a building or in an outside area, it's now called active threat training," PPD spokesperson Mike Wood told the News Journal.

Taking place in an empty building behind Ronald McDonald House and Sacred Heart Hospital, an officer's goal is to find and eliminate the shooter. Residents can expect a heavy police presence in the area until Friday afternoon when the training completes.

The officer begins in an empty stairwell before hearing a live shotgun pierce through the hallway of the building. The officer then enters the dimly lit hallway as speakers play audio of a real school shooting, and a fog machine and hazards simulate victims running away from the shooter and toward the officer.

"All that is to get the officer stimulated, to get the adrenaline going, to get the heart rate up and for him and her to concentrate on what they're doing and eliminate the threat as fast as possible," Wood told the News Journal.

Speedily heading down the hallway with gun drawn, the officer looks for the shooter and eliminates the threat by firing what's known as simunition, a non-lethal round that can be used during training. Although trainees won't be severely injured, Wood said they "hurt like hell."

Why is active shooter training important with Pensacola police?

The United States is averaging so far this year one mass shooting per day in which four or more people were shot or killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In 2023, there were 340 mass shootings, an increase from the 303 the previous year. The 261 mass shootings for far this year are more than double those of the entire year a decade ago in 2014, when 120 mass shootings occurred.

As the entire Pensacola Police Department undergoes active shooter training annually, the department puts an emphasis on making sure all of its officers are trained to the best of their ability, working to prevent a scenario like the tragic one that played out at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which a gunman fatally shot 19 students and two teachers, injuring 17 others in 2022.

"Years ago, if you had a person in a school shooting officers would arrive, they would surround the building and they would wait on SWAT, which is obviously not going to work anymore," Wood said. "So now the first officer goes into the building, tries to eliminate the threat and, if he's unable to do so, he gets on the radio and gives information to responding officers where the threat possibly is.

"We learn off of each and every incident throughout the nation and throughout the world," Wood said. "Law enforcement studies all of them, and then we get trained and re-trained, we alternate or we change some of the training that we've learned the previously year because we saw flaws in it."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola police thrown into active shooter simulation to test skills