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By JOYANNA LOVE | Managing Editor

Chilton County law enforcement from multiple agencies met at Isabella High School on Aug. 2-3 to refresh training on responding to active shooter scenarios.

The annual local training has been held for at least the past three years. Fortunately, in that time Chilton County Schools has had zero active shooter incidents.

A different school has been chosen for the training site each year to ensure officers are familiar with the layout.

“In a rural county, no one agency is going to be handling this type of crisis, if it does occur, … so we are going to have to depend on each other,” Asst. Chief Shane Mayfield of the Chilton County Sheriff’s Office said.

Training together gives officers the assurance that each officer “has as much knowledge and training as you do,” he said.

The training seeks to learn from the unfortunate situations that have happened in other parts of the country and be ready if something were ever to happen here.

“We want to be better prepared, so if it does decide to come here that our officers are prepared to take action and do what we need to do,” Sgt. Jamie Johnson of the Chilton County Sheriff’s Office said.

The training was divided into time in a classroom and then practicing what had just been presented. Johnson said using this format reinforces the information.

Mayfield said being mentally prepared for such a scenario is a big part of the training.

“We are training really hard on the right mindset … prepare yourself that if that day comes you are going to be aware, and you are going to go in there and protect whoever needs protecting despite whoever’s hurting them,” Johnson said, commenting that in an active shooter situation the suspect could be a teenager.

He said the training incorporates “how are you going to survive it physically, which is what we are training on the practical aspects of movements and the different techniques we use, but we are also hitting on how to survive it mentally if you have to do that.”

While the training is held in a school, the techniques officers are using can be applied in any active shooter incident.