On the Los Banos High School campus last month, Police Sgt. Jesus Parras oversaw active shooter training for the Los Banos Police Dept. The scenario is part of a quarterly training regime to prepare Los Banos police officers for the worst.
“The safety of our citizens and our students are the first priority at the police department,” Sgt. Parras said in a phone interview with the Westside Express.
According to Sgt. Parras, the training consists of “all of our sworn officers regardless of assignment” using paintball guns to handle an active shooter.
Los Banos PD staff acted as teachers and students during the training. “We try to create a very realistic scenario for the officers,” Parras said.
The training starts with a shooter coming onto campus and “shooting indiscriminately at victims,” according to Parras. Real 911 calls will then be made to dispatch. Dispatchers in turn radio officers to the scene.
“They’ll run into the school site or the business, try to locate the threat, and neutralize the threat,” Parras said.
Training continues after neutralizing the shooter, with officers taking on medical treatment for the injured, extracting the injured, and applying triage and more.
Also invited is the fire department, “They’ll go in with us and help us extract victims. So it’s a very realistic scenario,” Parras continued, “We try to do it as realistically as possible to induce some stress in the officers.”
Los Banos High is one of the sites selected for the quarterly active shooter training. Previous sites have included other schools and even Kagome’s Los Banos facility. The different sites provide different scenarios for the officers to train in.
“We learn something new every quarter,” Parras said, “Even if it’s a veteran or a new guy, everybody learns.” He stressed that the training keeps officers learning through repetition to address the mistakes and improve constantly. “There is always something we could do better,” he said.
Sgt. Parras is in charge of the firearm training team and supervises the gang unit. He has been with the department for 22 years.
“We’ve been focusing heavily on our active shooter response. And it’s one of our main training objectives for the year,” he said.
