Wareham Police host Active Shooter drills

WAREHAM, Mass (WLNE) — Police and fire departments from across New England came together in Wareham Friday to take part in a massive training event to prepare for an active shooter in their community.

“If any type of event like this happens around us, we’re all going to be going, regardless of what town it’s in.” Lead Instructor Calib Larue said. “So the fact that all of us are training together we’re all going to be able to speak the same language and we’re all going to, at the end of the day, save as many lives as possible.”

Larue said the goal was to make sure that police and first responders are prepared in case something ever happens in their community.

ALERRT, or the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, included a video presentation talking about the Uvalde shooting, which took place only a few hours away from the training’s inception in Texas.

The main portion of the program is active drills running through the day.

“By the time they leave here they’re friends, they’re shaking hands,” Instructor Matthew Kelley said. “We’re building these pre-incident relationships which you want to start to build beforehand because that makes when you actually go to these incidents – you know you’ve already met these people. You kind of start building this level of trust and it makes working with them much easier.”

One of the drills had several actors playing victims at a Walmart as police respond to an active shooter.

“It’s been great, we’ve had full buy in from all 213 people that we’ve trained so far, and it makes our job as instructors much easier when the students that you’re training actually take it seriously and they want to learn, and they want to become better first responders,” Kelly said.

The trainings were free to participating departments, covered by state and federal grants.