LYNCHBURG, Va. – A Lynchburg police training session includes a real-time sceanario with an active shooter in a building.
It’s a call no officer ever wants to experience.
“I know you’re trying to steal my wife. It’s gonna end today,” shouts an upset husband played by an actor.
“You’re going to die. You understand that?”
Lynchburg police officers are thenput to the test.
"In this particular scenario, it’s an office building where a husband has found out his wife is seeing someone else, (and he) has come to that business to confront that person with a firearm,” Anthony Martin, assistant training coordinator with Lynchburg police, said.
Martin plays the shooter and estranged husband in the scenario and says officers come in with little information on the suspect.
“It gets them in the mindset of, ‘What are my responsibilities, what do I need to do?’ to be able to quickly and effectively deal with that situation,” Martin said.
With active shooter situations becoming a norm in our society, Lynchburg police say they have to stay proactive. The most recent shooting situation happened on Monday in a UPS facility in New Jersey.
“This type of training is extremely important training for our officers to prepare them to respond to one of the most horrific events you can ever respond to,” Martin said.
The department continues to face a staff shortage, and the training has to be done while officers are on the clock, but the department says they are ready.
“They go through the drill. We critique, we talk to them about it, things that we can do better, things that they did well. Kind of give them a nice critique, and then they’re back out to their cars and back on the street,” Martin said.
Lynchburg police officers will continue the training all month long.