Rapid response
<p>Post Falls Police officers Kirk Rosenau, left, and Jason Dewitt, right, scan the halls of River City Middle School as they look for a team portraying gunmen during a training exercise Friday.</p>
<p>Post Falls Police officers make their way through the commons area of River City Middle School during an "active gunman" training exercise Friday.</p>
<p>Lindsey Roylance, 16, plays the role of a victim as Post Falls Police officers help evacuate her out of River City Middle School during a training exercise.</p>
POST FALLS - Jack Jordan took off his mask at River City Middle School on Friday and reflected about how he wasn't able to reach his final destination.
It was a credit to the Post Falls Police officers who had just participated in an active gunman training amid all the chaos - alarms sounding, screaming and downed student role players and the firing of assault rifles with blanks.
"I didn't make it to the place where I wanted to end up," said Jordan, who played the active shooter role and was "shot" in a hallway. "I was headed for a classroom, but I didn't make it there.
"I thought they did quite well. They didn't pay much attention to the casualties - they went after the shooter, which is what they're supposed to do."
Marshall Ford, a student role player in the training after school, said when some of the students were "shot," the training became realistic.
"It got the adrenaline going," he said.
Chief Scot Haug said it has been two years since PFPD held an active gunman training inside an occupied public building. He said the recent tragedies have brought preparedness back to the forefront. Another training will be held in April.
"It's unfortunate that we even have to have this discussion - 20 or 30 years ago you never thought we would have," Haug said. "But to stick our heads in the sand and say that it can't happen here doesn't make sense. We need to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best."
Haug said many of the shooting incidents have occurred in "Small Town, America," and cities in Kootenai County fit that bill.
He said exercises such as Friday's training are important because the chaotic situations of having a shooter present stays fresh in officers' minds.
"We try to make this as realistic as possible," Haug said. "We make it as chaotic as we can to give them a sense of what officers could face when they go in. This training helps ensure officers are on the same page when it comes to responding."
During a debriefing after the "incident," officers talked about the need for constant communication, staying together and evacuating survivors.
Haug said the training for active shooter situations has been tweaked in the past 10 years in that the former mindset was to secure the scene and wait for additional resources such as a SWAT team to arrive.
"But what we've seen with incidents in which people are killed is that you can't wait," he said. "You have to train your staff to quickly form a small team and get in and isolate that threat. The key is to have a plan in mind."
There will be a free community seminar on active shooter preparedness on Thursday from 7-9 p.m. at the Post Falls police station, 1717 E. Polston Ave.
"I hope to God that we never have to experience anything like this," Haug said. "It's like an insurance policy - you hope you never need to use (the training and skills in an actual incident), but, if you do, you're glad you've got it."