LSU’s National Center for Biomedical Research and Training/Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education (NCBRT/ACE) is using its training to give emergency responders in Oklahoma the tools to benefit their own communities.
On November 1-5, LSU NCBRT/ACE subject matter experts taught a series of trainings in Oklahoma City for over 60 law enforcement officers, emergency management personnel, and other responders from across the state. Participants included state and local police, game wardens, community college staff, Muscogee Creek Nation Lighthorse police officers, private security, and more.
Roughly half of Oklahoma’s 4 million residents live in rural areas. With approximately 11 thousand officers, one of the state’s biggest challenges has been figuring out how to get departments, many of which have limited resources, the training they need to prepare for threats. Through the LSU NCBRT/ACE train-the-trainer programs, participants will be certified to deliver the DHS-certified courses to their own communities, businesses, and jurisdictions.
AWR-219: Site Protection through Observational Techniques (SPOT) was one of the courses taught to responders. The course teaches emergency responders, security professionals, security support staff, and the public must work together to identify suspicious objects, substances, and people by training public safety personnel to improve their observational techniques.
Another course – PER-375: Surviving an Active Threat: Run. Hide. Fight. – addresses the Run. Hide. Fight. response paradigm and guides non-traditional first responders in the various ways these methods can be employed during an active threat incident.
“I patrol in very remote parts of the state, and my wife is a school teacher in a rural area that doesn’t have the local support to receive this type of training,” said Casey Young, a game warden supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. “There are a large number of underserved communities that would benefit greatly from this type of training, and I’m looking forward to being able to provide it.”
LSU NCBRT/ACE and the state of Oklahoma have had a strong partnership over the years, and have implemented other courses into its training curriculum. In 2018, Oklahoma adopted the Law Enforcement Active Shooter Emergency Response, or LASER, course as a standard training for its officers. Oklahoma delivers two indirect versions of LASER every month.
Dave Culver is the Law Enforcement Programs Manager for the Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security. He says that because of NCBRT/ACE’s indirect training program, his office is able to ensure that important trainings can reach everywhere from large metro areas to smaller rural areas.
“Our goal is to focus on the smaller communities that can’t do the same training as Tulsa and Oklahoma City,” said Culver. “Folks in small communities know one another, and they’re all going to show up to help during a threat. These trainings are about getting them together and giving them the tools to respond.”
In the future, Oklahoma hopes to adopt the Instructor Development Workshop, or IDW, and the Active Threat Integrated Response Course, or ATIRC, as part of their emergency response curriculum as well. LSU NCBRT/ACE will be performing an ATIRC train-the-trainer course in Oklahoma later this year, and they hope to adopt IDW as an equivalent to the state’s current instructor training requirements.
“NCBRT has the same training mission that we do,” Culver said. “It’s the perfect model because it’s flexible and adaptable. The partnership we have with NCBRT is so important because it allows us to standardize our response.”
