INTERVENTION

to stop the killer, Chris Salley told a group of about 50 officers from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department, Columbus Police, Mississippi State University Police, Mississippi University for Women Police, Caledonia Marshalls and other agencies.

That approach has come full circle in more than 50 years as law enforcement responses have evolved.

“These are things we just can’t ignore. We have to put together plans that work,” Salley said of the reason behind the instruction. “It is a very real issue that we have to be prepared to deal with. It stands on its on from any of the other things law enforcement faces.”

He uses the term “Active Killer,” citing examples where people have used vehicles, knives and other weapons.

But in almost every case, “immediate, rapid intervention is the best way to deal with if the goal of law enforcement is to save lives,” Salley said.

“That’s been our training and our approach for awhile now,” Lowndes County Sheriff

Mike Allege said. “The first officer there is to take action. Generally speaking that’s what we do unless it’s a situation where the victims already are out of harm’s way or the person already has barricaded themselves.

The frequency of “active Killer” cases may have raised awareness among the public, it hasn’t really among officers.

“I think businesses, schools, churches, groups like that are more conscious and think about it more often,” said Salley, a who offers instruction and training to many of those groups.

“Officers may understand the need for more training, but their mental approach, their mindset is the same as it’s always been, they will do what they have to do,” added Arledge, who is in his this term as sheriff.

Prior to Charles Whitman’s rampage from the tower on the University of Texas campus in the mid-1960s, that was the approach for most police agencies to such situations.

“They went in and did what officers do,” Salley said.

But the situation made law enforcement,

schools and other begin to wonder about the need for policies and procedures for these and other incidents. They ended up with a model used by California prisons that resulted in lockdowns.

Those procedures became the genesis for SWAT teams, social groups that would respond.

Unfortunately, over time and through numerous incidents, experts warned that approach was slow and cumbersome. In Colobine, Col. It took almost two hours before a response team entered the school.

“To understand how to respond to active killers today, you have to understand how we got to where we are, the history we went through,” Salley told the group.

“In the vast majority of cases today, the best response is to do what police do, you don’t need a policy, go in and take care of business,” he added, citing two recent cases, one in Parkland, Fla., and one in St. Mary’s County, Md., where officers did and didn’t follow that mantra.

While waiting for SWAT teams can improve officer safety, it often means injured victims aren’t getting medical treatment

and the attacker has more time to harm more people.

“Time is not on our side. Thirty minutes? We can’t do that. If it takes that long, we’re not very effective,” he told the officers.

Salley started his career as a police officer in Clarksdale, Miss., before working in Kosovo as a contract police offer for Dyncorp. He returned to the states to work in Siloam Springs, Ark. as a police officer and school resource officer. He was the state’s School Resource Officer of the Year in 2013 before becoming a consultant.

As for the effort to arm teachers as a response to school shootings, Salley is practical.

“That’s a very complex, multi-tiered problem that will take a complex, multi-tiered solution,” he said.

Like many others, he said a retired military person who is working in a school might be a much better candidate to be armed that a mother who never has been around guns. Likewise, he says it might be more appropriate in the office in a rural school where law enforcement is 30 minutes away than in a more urban setting.