Valley first responders train for active shooter situation

First responders on Wednesday trained as if there were a real active shooter inside a Valley church. They weren't practicing their response times as police officers or fire crews — they were acting as civilians, trying to run, hide, or fight. They say this will help them better teach the community how to respond.

The loud horn is going off over and over again. It signifies gunshots, and that's why people are running and even hiding inside a cubby to get to safety.

A man is acting as the shooter, holding a fake machine gun. He's running around the hallways of the Christ Church of the Valley, looking for his next victim.

"This is a full-body training where they take the students [and] they show them how to lock it down," said Sarah Gasper, officer with the Arizona Counterterrorism Information Center. "They show what it feels like with the running and how quickly you can run and where you can hide."

This training is put on by the Arizona Department of Public Safety as a part of the first-ever ALICE Instructor training class, where first responders are learning how to respond to an active shooter. Everything they learn here will be passed on to schools, churches, and workplaces.

"It's giving the Run Hide Fight an option," Gasper said. "So if you're going to run, [it teaches you] where you run, how you run, [and how to] make that decision."

ALICE Alert stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. The Arizona Counterterrorism Information Center officers say this is a step up from Run Hide Fight. And because first responders will be learning it, it only gives them an edge to act quickly themselves and help the community do the same.

"If [an active shooting situation] were to happen to me, I've got that engrained already in my practice," NAME. "I have trained over and over, and over again."

What the officers learned will be going into the community. Now that they have the training and firsthand knowledge of what it's like, they say it'll help them teach the community.