Large-scale active shooter training drill held in Kingston
KINGSTON - Police officers and firefighters held large-scale active shooter training drills in Kingston on Wednesday. It was as close to the real thing as these first responders from the South Shore could get.
"Now this allows the individual officers, and individual firefighters to see how it looks in practice," said Kingston Police Detective Lt. Michael Skowyra, "where they're going into rooms, clearing rooms. They're dealing with Simunition rounds, so it's like paintballs coming back at them."
The Kingston police and fire departments are running this large-scale training event for the first time. Turning the halls of the Silver Lake Regional High School into a scene from a mass shooting. Students are on vacation this week.
"It was good to actually see it, kind of have the heart rate going a little bit, adrenaline," said Kingston Police Officer Matthew Donovan.
Running drills in teams with simulation guns learning to narrow in on a mock-shooter and treating students with fake blood and mock injuries through the halls.
"Just getting those live reps, I think that is pretty much the most important thing," said high school resource officer Rich Allen.
First responders from several surrounding towns including Duxbury, Halifax, Hanson, and Plymouth joined in on the training which proved to be a big advantage.
"To see the fire departments and how they are going to act is really important to us to shape our response," said Allen.
They're learning from recent mass shootings and want to give families and the community a sense of reassurance.
"Things are still going to go wrong to some extent, but we want to try to make sure that we limit that as much as possible and we hope that we never have to use these skills," said Kingston Fire Captain John Bartlett.