UW-Milwaukee Police Officer Craig Rafferty is hosting Active Shooter Training programs in response to the Parkland school shooting, in efforts to better prepare students for an active shooter situation on campus.
“We don’t teach this to scare you, but to prepare you. Just in case,” said Rafferty told the crowd in room 191 in the Architecture and Urban Planning building one week after the shooting in Parkland Fl. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at, where you’ve been, your training, or your education. Don’t be naïve to the fact that this can happen to you.”
Each training session is around an hour long and highlights three main components: Avoid, Deny, Defend.
“You have to think, ‘Survivor mindset, avoid, deny, defend, what am I doing?” Rafferty said.
The avoid step involves staying as far away from the shooter as possible. With the Deny technique you would barricade all entrances and exits, denying the shooter from coming near you.
Rafferty urges all to only defend yourself if the first two steps are unsuccessful or impossible, unless you are properly trained in combat.
Officer Noel Ybarra of the UWM Police Department shared a description of the kinds of training they now undergo as new recruits.
“When we get hired, we all have to go through this exact same training. I’ve been through the Alert Training, it’s part of what we teach you, its hosted by the FBI and the University of Texas,” Ybarra said. “I’ve also been to Rescue Taskforce training, which prepares you for what to do after an active shooter event.”
“We go through training like this three, maybe four times annually,” Rafferty said.
This method is only one of many known training procedures and is very similar to the previously used technique: Run, Hide, Fight. The difference is the thought process involved from an individual standpoint. There are many other strategies to survive an active shooter situation, but Rafferty urges all to use whichever training they believe will keep them alive.
If there’s one thing Rafferty stressed more than anything, it’s that what you do is up to you.
“So many times we give you crime-prevention tips, we’re used to telling you what to do,” said Rafferty. “In this, I can’t tell you what to do.”
Rafferty recommends that students attend the Active Shooter Training, as well as the self-defense, and CPR courses offered on campus.
“You have to be prepared mentally and physically to deal with an active shooter and you tell yourself with a survivor mentality, ‘I will survive this incident’,” Rafferty said.
In addition to a detailed PowerPoint presentation, Officer Rafferty also played a Civilian Response to an Active
Shooter video during this training session. You can view the video here.
This training is aptly timed as gun violence is a major controversy in the US recently, with good cause.
“You see it on the news like I do people, this stuff is real,” Rafferty said.
According to a study by the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, shootings on college campuses have become more and more common. The research states that during just the 2015-2016 school year there were 30 shootings on college campuses. This is a rather large increase from only 12 during 2010-2011.
Although this seems like a tough subject to educate young people, Rafferty doesn’t mind at all.
“I like giving the information,” Rafferty said. “My main goal is first-of-all making sure everybody here at UWM is safe, and especially for the students making sure that they’re successful while they’re here. This is the best part about my job, giving this information and hoping that they retain it.”
Alyssa Josephs, a student attending the Active Shooter Training program said that the training increases her chances of surviving an active shooter situation.
“I feel like I will remain calmer in a situation, as calm as you can be whenever there is an active shooter present,” Josephs said.
The UWM Police Department now considers itself prepared for an active situation in comparison to only four years ago, when they received media attention for lack-of-lockdown drills, automatic text alerts, or even a public-address system.
UWM’s PantherVision team in 2014 was surprised to find out that UWM didn’t have adequate training for an active shooter after a man with a gun was seen entering Milwaukee Area Technical College, causing the campus to go into lockdown.
This raised questions about UWM’s lack of lockdown procedure, but that was how students were trained at the time. Officer Rafferty was quoted in an active shooter training in 2014 saying “If you lock down an active shooter, he’s locked down with you. He’s locked in the building with you. How are you going to run? How are you going to escape if the building is on lockdown?”
Although you can never fully prepare yourself for an active shooter situation, attending a training, and coming up with a plan can help.
You can find more information about these courses here.