On the morning of 2/20/14, officers with the Benton Police Department working in conjunction with the Benton School District held a training session on responses to emergency situations.
Officers taught the class to approximately 50 members of the school’s Campus Emergency Response Teams (CERT), which are teams comprised of members from every campus in the district, and other administrators. The core curriculum was based on a program called Avoid, Deny, and Defend (ADD).
The ADD program is designed to provide a course of action to school personnel and other citizens who find themselves involved in an active killer or other stressful event. The course highlights body responses to stressful events and how to manage these effects appropriately.
ADD also instructs participants on how to identify the event as an active shooter and helps them identify appropriate responses to the situation. Once identified as an active shooter event, attendees will learn the use of the acronym ADD (Avoid, Deny, Defend) as a method for responding to the incident.
Another part of the class was spent learning about communication issues during stressful events and also how to possibly mitigate situations from even occurring. Along with the classroom training, the CERT teams were provided with additional tools to help them during these situations. Due to the sensitivity of this issue, additional details cannot be provided for security reasons.
In addition to working with the school CERT teams, the department has hosted active killer training for numerous years and instituted mandatory walk-throughs of every campus in the district for every officer on duty at some point during the day. This was done to be both unpredictable with our presence and to also allow for multiple officers to be present at any given time during the school day. The department plans other training sessions with the CERT teams in the near future.
Ever since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999 to the massacre at Sandyhook Elementary last year, the Benton Police Department has evolved in their mindset and training in an attempt to stay ahead of those that would do harm to our children.
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