Search Result: Active Shooters

The conference portion of the 2007 TREXPO East offered a little bit of something for every attendee. Once primarily SWAT oriented, the TREXPO conference now includes classes of interest to tactical medics, SWAT operators, patrol officers, and gang officers.

At about 9 a.m. on April 16, snow was flurrying down on the Virginia Tech University campus. The flakes drifted lazily into the trees. Students walked to class. It was pretty. It was peaceful. It was the kind of scene that a college catalog photographer prays for. Just minutes later, the peace was broken.

Ever long for "the good old days?" I know that some of you do. But before you decide to switch places with yesterday's cop, it's important for you to know that you have much better tools and tactics than we did 30 years ago.

It was March 21, 2:55 p.m., spring was in the air in the remote north woods of Minnesota, and the students of Red Lake High School were anxiously awaiting the sound of the bell. What they heard instead was explosions out in the hallway.

At Columbine, the officers, deputies, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel did an incredible job in their response to an unbelievably bad situation. But through no fault of their own, the tactics they were trained to use were not suited to the nature of the incident.

The massacre of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School outside Denver, Colo., in April was the worst schoolyard carnage by students in this nation's history and many providing training lessons to law officers across the country for years.

Imagine yourself working uniformed patrol at 9:15 a.m. on a warm sunny day and you suddenly find yourself in Beirut, Bosnia, or back in the Mekong Delta. You go from thinking about where you'll stop for the next cup of coffee, to having your black-and-white shot up with full automatic AK-47 rounds.