Unfortunately, more and more active shooter incidents are happening throughout the world. It’s a situation no one wants to be in.
On Friday, the Downtown Shareholders of Kansas City, Kansas hosted an active shooter incident class at the KCK Police Department.
“If there's a tornado or a fire, my job is to get my other people on my floor to a designated spot,” participant Garry Cushinberry said.
Cushinberry, a senior vice president of media relations at CoreFirst Bank, drove all the way from Topeka to come to the class.
“You do fire training, you do tornado drill training, and unfortunately at this day and age, I think it's time for active shooter training,” Cushinberry said.
Captain Rance Quinn with the KCK Police Department said the training provides ways for people to be prepared in a situation no one wants to be in.
“It's probably better to be prepared and never use it, than to need it and not be prepared,” he said.
Between 2000 and 2013, the FBI’s study of 160 active shooter incidents showed roughly 70 percent of those shootings happened in either a business or education setting.
Sixty percent of the incidents ended before police arrived.
When in an active shooter incident, there are three steps: run, hide, fight.
“Run, from the very bad incident, and if you can't get away, try to hide, make yourself not visible to the suspect,” Quinn said. “And at the very least fight versus laying yourself down to someone who has bad intentions.”
Cushinberry said this is a class that will provide more information not only for his coworkers, but also his family.
“I'm the father of daughters, granddaughters, just want to prepare them too,” he said. “If education is out there, I want them to know about it, I want to know about it.”
For more information or free resources, materials and workshops on active shooter incident training click here.
