Officers train for worst situation

The air crackled with the sound of gunfire Thursday morning at Park Private Day School in Costa Mesa as police officers in a training exercise swarmed a mock shooter in one of the classrooms.

After a few moments lying motionless on the floor littered with 9 mm shells, the pretend-shooter stood up and patted the back of the men who shot him, his fellow officers..

Of course, this is training they hope never to have to use.

Unfortunately, with the reoccurrence of school shootings and other sniper-like events across the country, they plan to be ready for what the police call “active shooter” situations, Lt. Clay Epperson said.

“It’s very disturbing and there’s so many of them that it’s alarming,” Epperson said.

“It’s happened here in Orange County,” Epperson said, referring to a 1997 shooting in which a disgruntled ex-employee brought a shotgun, an AK-47 rifle and a handgun to his old job at the CalTrans Maintenance Yard in Orange, killed four people and injured another two.

Epperson has spent months with a number of sergeants getting the in-and-outs of the training squared away to keep things safe as possible, while maintaining an all-too-real environment.

With funding provided by the Newport-Mesa School District, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and UC Irvine police have been specially trained to subdue school shooters.

For most of this last week Costa Mesa Police have used the campus of the now closed school for their own style of education.

Using actual 9 mm rounds fitted with neon-colored, paint-filled plastic tips, truly added to the reality of the situations for the officers as they were able to fire their department-issued weapons during each scenario.

The biggest adjustment for the more seasoned officers was the speed at which they charged into each scenario, Det. Mike Cohen said.

“In the old-school train of thought you got to moving slowly and more tactically,” securing the perimeter and assessing the surrounding area, Cohen said.

Now, “you need to move fast, but it unifies the officers [movement] in those situations,” he added.

Using the old tactics gave assailants inside Columbine High School nearly 55 minutes to roam the halls on a killing spree, Epperson said of the 1999 shooting in which two students killed 12 of their classmates, one teacher and wounded 24 more.

In Thursday’s training, once the training officers located the “shooter” they would fan out to surround him, “presenting multiple threats,” basically, “giving him so much to deal with that he can’t possibly handle it and gives us the advantage,” Epperson said.

Almost every sworn officer, from sergeants, detectives, patrol officers and SWAT team members, studied six basic scenarios before running through the exercises.

Each situation presents its own challenges, Epperson said, adding the officers have to be able to adapt each time.

“You have to be pretty dynamic, shooting from different angles,” Epperson said.

“We’re trying to create an attack and approach to this that [says], ‘I’m going to take care of this community no matter what.’”

Now, the next step is to train the school staff for how they need to respond in those dangerous situations, Epperson said.