Teachers can attend active shooter training, taught by Utah County Sheriff’s Office

UTAH COUNTY – The Utah County Sheriff’s Office is training educators on ways to respond in a shooter situation through a multiweek Teacher’s Academy.

In some situations, the training is aimed to help de-escalate a situation before things get bad. Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith said there’s much more to the class than just focusing on guns.

“The national average is three minutes for an officer to get to an active shooter situation. Three minutes. So what are you gonna do in three minutes?” said Smith.

Smith said there are teachers who want to make a difference, including some who are carrying weapons in schools, but they’ve never received training on how to do that safely and effectively.

The training is a six-week academy where educators learn a variety of skills. Smith said teachers learn firearm safety, self-defense, in addition to going through shooter simulations. They’ll also go over-rules and liability around shooter incidents.

This training comes in addition to tactical trauma training, that is, what to do in the case someone is hurt in this kind of situation.

“We have got to stop the mindset that teachers are expected to be victims. They’re not. It’s time to fight back. They don’t have to be a victim,” said Smith.

Smith said they do retrainers for teachers who have been through the academy and want to go more in-depth in their training. He said whenever these trainings happen, they usually fill up within a couple of days.

With training manpower intensive and budget limited, he says they’d like to offer it to more educators if they could.

Smith said they’re the only department offering any kind of training like this in the state that he’s aware of, and while he said they’ve received some criticism, he would like to see more kinds of training out there because the need is there.