Emery High drama department and the Emery County Sheriff’s Office emergency team responded to Emery High for a mock drill. Each spring before school lets out for the summer the two team up for training. The training is important for the responders to learn the layout of the school in the event of an emergency. Neal Peacock is the drama teacher at Emery High and the students are glad to help out as they play the parts of injured students and the role of the criminals in the event.
Peacock said, “This is an eye opening experience for the kids to see how good our SWAT teams are in the county. It amazes the kids how good these officers are at their job. It is a fun challenge to stump the officers and they look forward to it. For the training this day there were four different locations where the students played the role of injured students and shooters. The officers went through the different scenarios.”
Sheriff Greg Funk said “We had about 32 officers participate and each entered the building alone. Should this type of situation ever arise, our deputies wouldn’t have time to wait for back-up. This kind of training is more realistic and with the kids in make-up and costume it makes it so real. In a small community like this chances are we know some of these kids. In a real situation we would have to bypass injured people and if you know them, it makes it a tough situation. It adds a whole new aspect to the training. This is a fantastic scenario. I can’t think of anything better.
“Getting into the schools and learning the layout of the schools is important so the officers can learn the buildings and become familiar with them. Each man through took approximately five-10 minutes. Those kids really do a fantastic job. Each time we train with them, we are put into a realistic situation. As a first responder your responsibility is to eliminate the threat and defuse the situation whatever it is. It was mandatory that our deputies participate and we had a really good turn out.
“We’ve discussed ways to handle these situations better. We hope that any mistakes we make will all be in training situations. If we ever have a real life situation, we hope we can handle it as we have trained. When you are dealing with human life we hope we can act in a quick and professional manner,” said Sheriff Funk.
ECSO trains in active shooter scenario with drama students
"Deputies Jeremiah Rich and Michael Oviatt participate in the scenario. Shelby Allred, Jamie Brinkerhoff and Jentrie Allred jumps out of the closet to scare the officers."