Last fall, a Lieutenant from Newtown, CT, where the 2016 Sandy Hook shooting left 26 people dead, spoke to a group of officers and told them how ill prepared police in that town had been for that incident. This and other school shootings across the country led the GPD to hold an active shooter training activity on May 19 at Gorham High School.
Ninety law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel from Cumberland and York counties along with an additional 90 volunteers made up of teachers, students and community members participated in the drill at Gorham High School.
Deputy Chief Chris Sanborn, who is the Regional Training Director for Cumberland County, said the drill looks eerily realistic. He believes these training activities will help police make the right decisions if a tragedy ever happens.
Photo credit Roger MarchandA group of law enforcement officers gathered outside of the Gorham Municipal Center for the active shooter training exercise on May 19.
The drills were a part of a two-day training course for local law enforcement, and were taught by former and current members of law enforcement who have specialties in terrorism response, joint combat operations, and active shooter scenarios. While they say the training isn’t perfect, it helps first responders prepare for an incident.
During the drill, students pretended to be dead or wounded, and even used makeup to create fake injuries and spill fake blood. The active shooter, played by a volunteer, was given a gun with blanks to make the scenario sound as real as possible. Police say the training can sound extreme, but they say these acts of terrorism are happening too often, and could happen at any time. In fact, there was another school shooting in Texas on May 18.
“Unfortunately I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘if’ this happens in Maine, it’s actually a matter of ‘when’ it happens in Maine. That’s why we took the extra steps in preparing to deal with those type of incidents,” said Sanborn.
The training was free to all participants as the District 2 Training Council has a budget which covers this type of event. The instructors were all volunteers from the Emergency Services Unit. Sanborn would like to thank the Gorham School administration for making this training possible and all the volunteers that helped to make the training as realistic as it could be.