GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – In the wake of the shooting at the Oneida Casino complex this past weekend, some people are looking closer at how training for similar situations came into play.
Jason Weber is the Public Safety Training Coordinator at NWTC, and has worked very closely with officers and firefighters who responded to the scene – as well as the Oneida Nation. He called the news ‘very, very troubling,’ but thinks the training really paid off on Saturday night.
“[You see] multiple agencies, multiple disciplines that respond and how they work well together, communicate well together, that goes back to the training. But all of the training that we do, we don’t want to see a lot of being used! You want to prevent something from happening,” Weber told WTAQ News. “That’s the biggest thing really, is to prevent.”
Organizations are becoming more keen on preparing for anything, especially the worst case scenarios. Weber says he’s received a number of inquiries and calls since the incident occurred, and says local police departments offer similar training.
“It’s really dependent on where you are and what the situation is, which goes into the company, the school, the church, wherever we’re at, how are they notifying others should an incident happen?” Weber said. “I think we’re still stuck in a reactive world…After the Miller-Coors shooting down there about a year ago, we started to get some phone calls. I think we’re still in that mindset that [it] doesn’t happen here.”
But, as we saw on Saturday, and even at the Fox River Mall back in January, it does happen here. And even if staff and police are trained to handle the situation, most regular people haven’t gone through those protocols. Weber has some tips.
“There’s 3 options: There’s run, hide, or fight,” Weber said. “It’s dependent upon that situation and having situational awareness. So obviously, you want to get out. You want to get away from that incident, as far away as possible. If you can run, do it. If you can’t, well then we might need to hide or deny – barricade ourselves, take cover in a room and lock the door…The last thing, heaven forbid if you get involved in it, but it’s going to be that fight and defend. We tell people that if you’re in that position, you fight like your life depends on it.”
While the active shooter training typically gets Weber in the door, he says they’ll run a full security survey ranging from fixing policies and procedures to checking the layout of a facility, checking locks and cameras, and more.
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