DSS staff practice how to hold down an assailant during active shooter training this week.
DSS staff get hands-on training on what to do if the worst actually happens
First Sgt. James Jones II gives a presentation about what to do in an active shooting situation to a room filled with staff from the Sampson County Department of Social Services.
DSS staff are showing hiding behind the podium in the front corner of the room as part of one of the training drills this week.
Capt. Tim Bass from the Sampson County Sheriff’s Office, acting as the shooter in a training scenario, comes into the room “shooting” DSS staff with the buzzer sound from an app on his phone.
DSS employees work together to take down one of the other agents who is pretending to be the shooter in a scenario from the afternoon training session Thursday.
Two DSS staffers push a table against the back door of the conference room to barricade it from a potential shooter during drills this week.
A chair on top of a table was pushed against the door to act as more of a barrier as the DSS staff work to barricade the door to the conference room to keep a potential shooter out during a scenario played out during training this week.
The conference room door with the finished barricade made by DSS staff stands ready for testing as DSS staff move away from the door to see if Capt. Bass can open it.
“Columbine changed the whole process of lockdown drills,” Sampson County Sheriff’s First Sgt. James Jones II said to start Thursday morning’s active shooter training at the Sampson County Social Services building.
He was trying to emphasize the training need as he worked throughout the week with staff from the Sampson County Department Social Services going through active shooter training. Jennifer Wuester, the Sampson County DSS employee who helped put together the event, said this training was put together at the request of Lynn Fields, DSS director.
Wuester said Fields’ “most important priority is the emotional and physical well being of all the staff.” She said that Fields had asked her to put this class together to create an environment so that the DSS agents could feel safer while working in the building.
Wuester was able to coordinate this training with both the Sampson County Sheriff’s Office and Sampson Community College to create something for all the agents to go through.
The training was split into two parts.
The morning was made up of a “classroom” portion where Jones gave a PowerPoint to the trainees.
The PowerPoint was to give an instructional guide, called ALICE training, on what to do if you find yourself in an active shooting. Slides included talking about the levels of awareness, when it’s best to run, lock yourselves in or when to fight back, how to take down a shooter if they have breached the room you are in and even how to handle the gun before the police arrive.
This all culminated with the afternoon training drills where the DSS staff had to take everything they learned that morning and put it into realistic scenarios that could happen.
Both Jones and Sheriff’s Capt. Tim Bass took turns explaining what needed to be done if what they were practicing actually come to fruition. Bass started with having six people show how to take down an assailant by having one of them be the shooter and the other five hold his arms, legs and head.
He talked them through how to hold his body parts correctly, and what everyone else should be doing while they restrain the shooter, namely, getting the gun away from him and checking to see if he had any other weapons.
Then, Jones and Bass worked on how they should hide in the room. The first demonstration had the group just hunkering in the corner, and then showing them why that was wrong. The second was a scenario where they would attack the shooter by throwing whatever was available to them. In this scenario, it was foam balls and not staplers and binders talked about in the presentations.
The shooter was armed with a Nerf gun and told to wait outside until Bass got to them and fired the first “shot,” the sound of an air horn from a phone app due to the building still being open. When the people inside the room heard the first gun shot, they then scattered across the length of the room to try to hide and find a best way to attack the shooter when they came in.
When the shooter came in through the door, spraying Nerf gun bullets, everyone else threw their foam balls before other members went to subdue the “shooter.”
In the first demonstration they said that all 23 agents would’ve died while in the second demonstration only six people were shot, and most of them were shot in places where they would live, like the leg.
Another demonstration that they did was how to barricade a door within a short amount of time.
“Think about what you can use,” Jones had said earlier in the day, and it was clear that everyone had kept that in mind when doing the afternoon portion of the training.
The agents inside the room worked to barricade the door with tables before stacking chairs on top. Then they grabbed some rope that was at the front of the room and tied the door handle to the inside handle of the storage closet that was near it. The activity was successful, with Bass, who was acting as the shooter, unable to get inside or even open the door.
At the end of the training, both Jones and Bassaid they hoped trainees would not only remember what they’ve been taught, but that they will put it into practice, even if it’s something as simple as getting a wood door stopper to jam under the door or keeping your eyes up when you’re walking around.
“Practice hones skill,” Wuester said in regard to the training class. “And we hope that this will help them cultivate a plan in the future.”
Wuester has said that they hope to continue this training, but even if they don’t work with the sheriff’s office on ALICE training as just a department again, she said the county is hoping to develop more permanent training for the entire county.
The Sampson County Sheriff’s Office did the training at no additional cost for the DSS.
You can reach Alyssa Bergey at 910-249-4617