Berkeley County School District SROs undergo simulated shooter training ahead of new school year

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCBD) – School resource officers serving the Berkeley County School District participated in a simulated active shooter situation on Tuesday as part of their annual summer training.

“Anytime there is an active shooter situation, we evaluate, we read as much information from the after-action report,” said Tim Knight, BCSD Director of Security and Emergency Management.

The training is built to be as realistic as possible. One simulation included officers having to break into a door of the school, then run through the hallways, not knowing the situation or who the simulated shooter may be. The “shooter” was then confronted, and officers fired their weapons to take the assailant out and eliminate the danger.

This is the 9^th year of training. As new school shootings happen across the country, the officers add new information to the training to ensure they cover all possible scenarios.

“This year we’re actually going to implement a scenario from Uvalde, from that elementary school, and because it’s something that I’ve never really seen before,” said Knight.

Technology is also added, including recorded video scenarios of potential shootings using the Milo Range Shooting Simulator.

“This is closest we can get to obviously the real thing and hopefully none of us ever have to experience this,” said Capt. Bobby Shuler with the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s still with the screaming and the sights and sounds- you’ve got your blood pressure going and then also the good thing is after that simulator scenario the SROs can get critiqued in real-time.”

The screen captures the exact spot where each officer fired their weapon, so they can see how they might need to improve their skills.

“All of our SROs take this very seriously,” said Knight. “The good thing is we have a number of new SROs coming in this year and some of them have never experienced this type of training. So that’s always a good thing and again we try to create real-life scenarios.”

Tuesday’s simulation took place at Goose Creek High School. The training will continue throughout the week.