Just in case!

In the first week of September, Rockdale Police officers responded to a “terroristic threat” at a local business in Rockdale.

When a disgruntled ex-employee threated to shoot employees at a local business, Rockdale Police were ready.

“Nowadays we have to take every threat seriously,” said Lt. Stephen Goodrich. “Because of all the active shooter situations, we’ve had two in the last two months in Texas alone, so we want to be geared and ready for it. If it ever does occur, you don’t want to be caught on your heels.”

SHOOTER KIT—Part of the PDs preparation is equipment and training. Each of the eight officers on the force is outfitted with an active shooter response kit, which cost $2,000 each.

“We just decided that it was a priority for us. I went to the council and said, we want to pull from these places we budgeted for and make this purchase and they were all for it,” said Goodrich.

The kit fits into a backpack and contains body armor, three AR15 magazines, three pistol magazines, a knife with a window punch and a tourniquet.

Body armor is worn on top of the bulletproof vests police already wear, according to Goodrich. It has level four ballistic panels that can stop multiple hits from large caliber rifles.

“We began the process for buying the kits in December, 2017, because of the way things have been going. There are active shooter situations all over the world,” Goodrich said.

RISD—The police department has been working with the Rockdale Independent School District to prepare in the event of an active shooter situation.

“God forbid something like that happens. Our responsibility as a school district is do everything we can to protect our students,” said Supt. Dr. Denise Monzingo. “When a bad event happens, it’s really important that our staff is trained.”

The district works in concert with the police department on drills that deal with preparation for an emergency and the aftermath of such an event.

“We have to think about things like: Where would the police go to meet with administration? Where do parents go to pick up their kids? If we don’t have a system in place, imagine the chaos. We need a system to check off the names of kids,” Dr. Monzingo said.

The school district already has stringent security measures in place. Every campus is closed, which means people have to be buzzed into the building through the front doors, and everyone who enters must sign in at the front office.

“We have held joint trainings and the school district here is very big on planning. It’s actually a well thought out process,” Goodrich said.

MASS SHOOTINGS—

The necessity of this type of preparation is more pronounced this year after the mass shootings in Gilroy, CA; El Paso; Dayton, Ohio and Odessa.

At a press conference after the Odessa shooting, FBI special agent Christopher Combs said the nation is now averaging an active shooter incident “every other week.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigations initiated a study of active shooter incidents to provide federal, state, local, campus and tribal law enforcement with accurate data to better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents, according to FBI officials. (See graph above).

The FBI defines an active shooter as an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.

These high profile shootings in Texas have spurred Republican government officials to form task forces and legislative committees to discuss steps for preventing future massacres and Democrats have called on Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to address gun violence.

TEXAS LEGISLATURE—Abbott released the Texas Safety Action report that detailed the eight executive orders he issued which focus on strengthening law enforcement’s ability to respond to and prevent future shootings, mainly through improving reporting channels.

He also formed the Texas Safety Commission and Domestic Terrorism Task Force to explore strategies for how to combat these tragedies. His office stressed that legislative solutions are still needed.

In the report he recommended to the Legislature to “consider ways to make it easy, affordable, and beneficial for a private seller of firearms to voluntarily use background checks when selling firearms to strangers.”

The gun debate is controversial to be sure and there are many different ideas about how to handle gun violence.

“I see both sides of the argument, because I hate knowing that if I’m going to go into a gunfight there may be somebody with a high powered assault rifle, who has one just as good as mine or even better,” Goodrich said about laws restricting gun ownership.

“If a better vetting process were in place, if there were a mandatory waiting period, it would allow some of these people that do have bad intent a couple days cool down before they are cleared to purchase that firearm. I think that would prevent some of these hotheads from flying off the handle,” he added.

Texas law has no mandatory waiting period for handgun purchases and no law requiring licensed firearms dealers to initiate background checks, so firearms dealers initiate the federal background checks by contacting the FBI directly, according to the Texas government.

Private sellers (sellers who are not licensed dealers) are not required to initiate a background check when selling a firearm.

TRAINING—Officers Dillion Ford and Jeremiah Harden were the Rockdale officers sent to the Police Academy for training.

Ford, a 2015 Rockdale High School graduate, is wearing the active shooter kit which every officer on the force has, in the photo on page 1A.

“I don’t think anybody’s ready for an active shooter situation, honestly,” Ford said. “I’m ready for it in the way that I trained for it at the Academy and my instincts can repeat what we did in response to a shooter.”