By LINDA KELLETT

C-S-E News Staff

FORT PLAIN — With the shock and horror of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings still fresh in our collective memories, area law enforcement personnel in St. Johnsville and Fort Plain in recent days have toured local school facilities in order to familiarize themselves with the layouts of district buildings.

They’ve also “hit the books” themselves in order to be better prepared for a potential emergency response to an active shooter.

With district students out on mid-winter break, members of the Fort Plain Police Department assembled at the high school on Tuesday to take part in classroom instruction and drill led by Herkimer Police Officer Jody Wheet.

The training session was organized and coordinated by Fort Plain Police Chief Robert Thomas III. Among those present was Fort Plain Fire Chief Brian Muehleck.

Wheet explained that the active-shooter response program started in the wake of the 1999 Columbine school shootings and has evolved over time.

He defined an “active shooter” as “one or more subjects who participate in a random or systematic shooting spree, demonstrating their intent to continuously harm others. The overriding objective of the active shooter appears to be mass murder,” he said.

The overall purpose of the officers’ response to those tactics is “to save lives and prevent series injuries,” Wheet said. The goal is to “stop the shooter by denying him or her access to additional victims.”

The environment that responding officers might encounter brings a host of potential problems, from alarms going off, people screaming, confusion, carnage to fires and explosive devices, he said.

He stressed the importance of communication and the gathering of information en route; and he reviewed safety measures and potential tactical maneuvers.

Finally, detailing the order of steps that officers should take when responding to such a scene, Wheet said the first priority is to stop the shooter. Victim rescue, the provision of medical assistance and preservation of the crime scene should follow in that order.

Following the presentation, small groups of officers participated in non-lethal “simunition training.”

As they donned protective headgear and vests, Wheet cautioned the officers to follow safety procedures and to treat the simunition training pistols as if they were loaded weapons. “They hurt at 20 feet,” he said.

“Try to make it as real as possible,” Wheet said.

A debriefing followed each scenario.

As noted in statistics compiled by Thomas, police officers in one month see more trauma than ordinary citizens see in a lifetime. Additionally, the suicide rate by police personnel is eight times greater than deaths by homicide.