Adrenaline flows as post police prepare for worst case

By Wallace McBride, Fort Jackson LeaderMay 22, 2015

Take aim
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Take cover
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No brass, no ammo
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It's clear
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Partnership through coaching, teaching, mentoring
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The scenarios were imaginary, but the anxiety was real.

Department of Army police officers spent most of the day Friday with guns in their hands, defending themselves from notional "bad guys" in a series of training exercises on and off post. Officers from the Richland County Sheriff's Department coached Fort Jackson police on tactics for dealing with active shooters.

Cpl. Dominick Pagano, a trainer with RCSD and an Army veteran, wasted few words in detailing the training goal for the day.

"The idea here is speed, surprise and violence of action -- to overwhelm the bad guy," Pagano said.

Gerald Lawson, Fort Jackson's chief of police, praised the day's exercises.

"This is giving us a practical exercise, allowing us to train hands-on should something happen at Fort Jackson," he said. The co-training also helps develop relationships with outside law enforcement who could be involved with active-shooter incidents on post.

"Also, it gets us out of Fort Jackson," Lawson said. "It puts us in a training area that we're not familiar with. It's a different environment."

The exercises were more psychologically complex than they might have appeared from a distance, said patrol officer Roy Phoenix.

"We used to do similar training with role players who would shoot back with Simunition," he said. "Your nerves will go up, but you pace will go down because you know there's the possibility that someone is going to shoot back at you."

Last week's training also required police to spend part of the day pretending their colleagues had been injured or killed, all while phantom gunmen put them in the crosshairs. There's not much that can be done about the chemicals that course through your body during times of danger, but Phoenix said training experiences could help an officer better manage his response.

"There's hesitation because you don't want to mess up," he said. "Then again, your adrenaline is also going. People who haven't done this (training) enough are tempted to pull the trigger right off the bat."

Training began Friday morning at a vacant building on Fort Jackson. Police were walked through the halls, learning to protect themselves while sweeping the premises for threats. After lunch, they moved off post to the sheriff's department shooting range. There, they practiced evacuating injured people from crime scenes by loading one another into the backseats -- and trunks -- of patrol cars.

Officers also learned the best ways to seek cover from gunfire, eventually returning fire later that day with Simunition -- non-lethal training ammunition.

Still, the day was not without its genuine risks.

Police dressed in full uniform, body armor and utility belts, adding a few degrees to the day's already warm temperature.

They wore safety glasses to protect their eyes from shells being ejected from firearms.

And, most important, there was always the chance that live rounds and loaded weapons might accidentally find their way into the training exercise. At the start of the session, the officers patted one another down in search of weapons and ammunition that might be confused with the real thing.