Butler County Community College will host a two-day active shooter response training course beginning Thursday.
National Trainer Tony Castillo will lead the course. Catillo is a certified with the ALICE program, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.
“If you pick any one of these active shooter incidents, the vast majority of them have occurred and ended before police got there,” Castillo said. “We know that we, as law enforcement, are going to show up. But what do the people do that are actually involved in these before we can get there? It’s about training what we call the true first responders.”
Although the acronym ALICE has not changed in the 14 years the program has been in existence, the number of these incidents has changed people’s attitudes.
“When we first started doing this, we had to really work at getting people to understand that it can happen in their community,” Castillo said. “We no longer have to spend a lot of time convincing communities that an incident could happen because they know it can.”
Upon completing the program, participants will become certified ALICE instructors and able to return to their organization and teach others how to deal with these kinds of situations.
