As outrage mounts against police in Uvalde, Texas, who apparently waited more than an hour before confronting an active shooter inside an elementary school, law enforcement officials in California said Friday they are trained with a completely different approach: get in right away.
“An active shooter is a patrol-level response, not SWAT,” said Sgt. Mario Ysit of the Tracy Police Department in San Joaquin County told The Chronicle.
Officers “in black and white cars will race to the scene and try to do an intervention,” said Ysit, who serves as the department’s spokeswoman and field training coordinator. “Nobody has to wait for reinforcements. We hire people with the mental capacity to make decisions. … We have the expectation that you can do your job without explicit instructions for each task.”
Other experts agreed, citing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre as a turning point. At the time of that incident in Colorado, police were still unused to horrific volleys of gunfire on school campuses. As a result, officers in Columbine treated it like a hostage barricade situation, setting up a perimeter and mobilizing a SWAT team, even as people died.
“Columbine was a game changer,” said Lt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. “There was a lot of backlash…and as a result, law enforcement departments across the country changed their rules of conduct. We went to a ‘rapid action response team’ (model), where the officers on scene combine into a small team, go in, find the threat and take appropriate action to stop the shooting.”
In short, Ysit and Kelly said, there is no time to negotiate with a suspect, call in backup or wait for a supervisor to arrive.
“You give someone a reasonable opportunity to obey an order,” Ysit said. But “if someone is actively shooting, there is no negotiation. The threat must be stopped.”
Police and fire agencies in Santa Clara County began crafting a joint mass casualty protocol after Columbine and have gradually refined it since then, leaning more toward a swift, immediate and one-time response if needed.
Four years ago, South Bay departments scrapped a plan that required officers to enter the scenes of mass shootings in a diamond formation, with at least four people on a team. Departments are now trying to be more streamlined and less formalized, said San Jose Police Officer Steve Aponte.
“If you hear of a shooter taking on victims, you go in and take care of business,” he explained. “Because the longer we wait, the more casualties occur.”
San Jose police demonstrated the effectiveness of their policy and training during last year’s shooting at a VTA rail yard, Aponte added, noting that officers “standing a few feet away” from the site heard gunshots and entered quickly into the building, announcing his presence and searching for a suspect as the gunshots continued to ring out. The suspect ended up taking his own life as officers gave orders, Aponte said, adding that he believes his quick action potentially saved lives.
While information about the terrifying scene at Robb Elementary School is still coming to light, where students evidently made multiple 911 calls while officers stood in a hallway, bewildered officers in the Bay Area tried to give make sense of the facts by pointing out distinctions between the small, rural department and its larger urban agencies.
“We’re talking about a very rural police department in a community that doesn’t have a lot of resources,” said Kelly, who has undergone extensive training and has responded to several mass casualty events, including the 2012 Oikos University shooting, in the one where a gunman killed seven people at a Korean Christian college in Oakland.
In urban regions like the Bay Area, police frequently train for violent events with multiple fatalities. The departments also provide patrol officers with equipment so they can respond to these incidents immediately, in a small team or alone, if necessary.
Tracy’s department has three active shooter teams with tourniquets, chest seals and combat gauze, along with a BearCat armored vehicle that is available to any officer in need. In Alameda County, every sheriff’s patrolman has a rifle, and deputies carry door-breaking gear, as well as shields and turnstiles.
With all the focus California departments have put on mass shootings, some officials expressed frustration Friday with the narrative emerging from Uvalde, fearing it will reflect poorly on other departments.
“A lot of the comments coming out of Uvalde are not indicative of what law enforcement is doing on a national level,” Kelly said.
He invoked a credo that other officials said they shared: In this profession, he said, “you are going to risk your life. You’re going to save the children. You could die doing it. That’s what you signed up for.
Rachel Swan is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @rachelswan
Reference-www.sfchronicle.com