By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

RESERVE – St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s deputies spent the past week learning lessons that could prove very helpful in a situation where an armed man endangers the lives of civilians.

Deputies from the traffic, patrol, detective, narcotics and felony intercept divisions are in the middle of a 16-hour training exercise designed to help them handle a scenario where an active shooter is on the run in a public building. The class, taking place at East St. John High School, is part of an initiative by the Sheriff’s Office to make sure all deputies are ready in an emergency.

“When a call comes through that indicates an active shooter you don’t know who will be first to respond,” said Maj. Chuck Bazile a Special Operations Response Team commander for the Sheriff’s Office. “We are giving all our officers a better understanding of what they could encounter on that sort of call.”

Bazile said the training is not only preparing officers for the unexpected, it is also bringing together deputies who don’t normally work together in a regular day.

“I’ve been impressed with the level of cooperation from these guys and the way they have handled the scenarios we have put them through,” Bazile said. “I’m confident that any officer on the force would be prepared for any situation that involves tactically moving in on a building.”

In exercises Thursday, groups of officers, 22 in total, played the role of first responders to a situation involving a gang of shooters running through the school. The officers acted to engage and bring down the shooters while also running searches through every classroom for other suspects. The officers were dressed in heavy protective gear and used blanks and “soap bullets.” By the end of training next week, Bazile said more than 90 officers will go through the course.

“The knowledge these guys gain through this exercise will help them make appropriate decisions in any scenario involving an active shooter,” Bazile said. “Whether it is a shooter in a building, at a home or during a traffic stop, they are learning specific skills that could aid them at any time.”

Bazile said training of this nature stems from the response to the massive school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. Bazile explained first responders to the shooting were forced to wait for SWAT units because they didn’t have the necessary skills to move on the building.

“There has been a much stronger push nationwide to involve more police officers in this sort of training,” Bazile said. “No one wants to deal with a situation where people are waiting around while people are getting shot or killed.”

Bazile said in 2005, he and his partner, the late Octavio “Ox” Gonzales, went to a class in Texas to become trained instructors in tactical exercises. In 2006, with the help of outside instruction, he led the St. John Sheriff’s Office in the first class of its kind in the state.

“It has grown exponentially since that time,” Bazile said. “Now there are classes all across the state, and all of them are federally funded. The grants pay for equipment, building use, officer overtime and anything else needed to conduct the training.”

Bazile said the current controlled training is leading up to a much more broader drill to be held in November that will involve the Sheriff’s Office, hospital personnel, the parish emergency operations center and other volunteers.

“It will be a mock drill, but all of responses will be real,” he said. “We haven’t determined the exact location, but it will be one that involves some public building in the parish.”