Interesting (albeit short) article from abc15 regarding MCSO’s officers training for school shootings; this is the THIRD active-shooter type of training MCSO has done this year!! Compare this to nonexistent active shooter training that ASUPD gives its officers!!
GLENDALE, AZ – A lot of deputies were out with their guns drawn and firing today, but fortunately it was only a training exercise designed to keep school children safe.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he wants to make sure his deputies are ready in case a school shooting were to happen here in the Valley.
Saturday’s exercise was the third this year for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
They can be scary to watch because they look and feel so real.
Deputies had their guns drawn and “victims” were lying on the ground with simulated bullet wounds as other children ran from the scene.
Today’s exercise took place at Heritage Elementary School in Glendale.
Students watching the simulation said it was a reality check.
“To think that this actually happens in schools, just think of the amount of people running for their lives,” said student Jack Acritelli.
Arpaio said that in recent years more resources have been placed into combatting school shootings.
Just last month there were 11 shootings on school campuses around the U.S.
Now everyone can calm down. If you have a member of the ASUPD Firearms Club on scene when this occurs they can take point in front of everyone they alienated. Since they are qualified on all the toys, get training, they can take the front guy position.
Even more likely, they will sit on the perimeter posing with their m4 patrol rifles as Tempe goes in and handles the scene. Cynical perspective? Not even close…it happened before, this time it was a barricaded subject at Wellsfargo.
I heard about this call. This was the one where Janda and Anderson were there and Tempe showed up in force. Apparently Janda was talking a bunch of shit about Tempe handling the call unsafe with poor tactics.
He should have kept his mouth shut and thanked them for their service, for potentially saving his ass. He probably criticizes Navy Seal operations from his couch. Those are the varsity teams. As an advanced police aide you should show some respect.
Training at ASUPD…PowerPoint on computer in house OK. real agency sponsored training, free or not, denied, denied, denied. Ready for an active shooter? Ha! We can’t even figure out a schedule or retention, shuffling people everywhere, offering overtime for years. Plan for 2014, keep doing the same thing.
Judging by the constant turnover our department experiences year after stinking year their philosophy is this. We are going to lose employees as it is, why train them and make them more marketable for another police department?
The low speed high drag life of an ASU Police officer isn’t for everyone. If trolling around at sub standard pay and almost doing police work with predatory supervisors looking to promote off your workstation file isn’t for you then keep applying for police departments that value their people.
Besides, do you want to be laughed at driving a hybrid mall cop security guard patrol “vehicle” never designed for police work and have a bunch of dumb dumbs refer to you as ASU Security despite all the police patches? Probably not.
You have to walk before you can run and the Arizona State University Police Department has been crawling for years. Most officers are only equipped with a pistol, sometimes carry shotguns, and most are not equipped or qualified for carrying a rifle. Realistically an active shooter would have the advantage of surprise, annonymity, and if they bring more than a pistol, firepower.
When you consider how many officers failed qualification shoots and how few man the campuses the issue of preparedness is more an issue of gross negligence. Gross negligence is standard operating procedure at ASUPD. With the highest paid police chief in Arizona how could this happen?
I’m glad MCSO takes preparation, training seriously. They are used to handling real police situations and realize the potential hazard of a mad shooter. Public safety is a priority for county.
ASU Police operates on hope and pray method falsely believing what little we have is acceptable. We are severely understaffed, under trained, and could easily be outgunned. With the millions spent on our police department all of this is unacceptable.
I guess our pd can’t afford a damn thing since they promoted 3 out of 4 people to be supervisors. There’s no acceptable excuse for the excess, waste, and complete lack of return. Some people here want to serve the public, but their biggest obstacle are not criminals, but leadership stuffing it’s pockets full of cash looking only to serve themselves.
Our active shooter training begins when the active shooter, shooters come. The usual things will happen. People will say ,”Oh my god. How could this happen?” They will read the blog, look at our department and say, “Oh, ok.” The university will hire more public relations people than they enlisted in 2013, start writing checks to victim’s families, and manipulate the news and city of Tempe to remain quiet.
You are exactly right. They never heard of the phrase, “An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.”
Our training will begin when the incident begins. When the smoke clears and the coroners leave they will hire PR firms and write checks to make it all go away.
We don’t even get training ammo to keep skills up, it’s a joke. We have too many fat cats gobbling up the revenue before it gets down to patrol and little money goes to training. Incompetence has it’s price, but nobody here seems to care as long as they get paid. It’s good to see them getting called out.
Our active shooter training is an inconsistent joke. Even for regular shoots GED Commander Orr will send out threatening emails about what will happen if people miss a shoot and then cancels. Command probably spent the money they needed for ammo on something absurd.
I agree, the training will be on the job when the bad guy comes and that’s negligent at best.
How many of you remember the call of a subject claiming to have a 50 cal sniper rifle pointed at dispatch? In response our guys get sent out in helmets with riot shields attached and shotguns. The only person with a rifle was Commander Lou S. on top of the Tempe 103 roof, silhouetteing himself against the white roof in our nearly black uniform. Genius.
The sniper, if real, would have taken that shot as a free gift. Tempe staged at Chevron as some dummy ordered a PA out to direct traffic in the potential line of fire. We were lucky this call wasn’t real, but it should have been a wake-up call for how unprepared our agency is for an active shooter. The community depends on an agency that is unprepared to deliver.
Command is more worried about an active shooter inside the department than doing what needs to be done to protect the public from an active shooter.
The chief has an AR15 he’s not qualified to carry, he’s carried it in violation of department policy for a few years now. Only a very few officers are qualified to use them to defend the public. If the goal was public safety it would be the other way around.
It would be so easy for the ASUPD firearms club to conduct this training, sim guns, empty buildings, employee actors, combatants, but no. Why? Probably because all the funding is spent on purchases for the third floor, things that are not of a law enforcement nature, and certainly things that won’t make officers more prepared to protect the ASU community when a crisis like this happens.