Santa Maria Police Department- Santa Maria, CA
In the same way students are trained with fire drills, active shooter training prepares students, or employees, before an incident. Typical law enforcement response time to an incident in Santa Maria would likely be 5 or 6 minutes, according to officers, and it could take a local SWAT team 45 minutes to an hour to respond, so it’s critical residents know their options and how to counter an attack. The way police respond to an active shooter changed following the Columbine High School shootings of 1999, and law enforcement continues to modify its training methods, Armstrong said. The main program Santa Maria officers now use comes from an organization called the ALICE Training. ALICE is an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate. Read more
