FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — Aroostook County law enforcement along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection met at the U.S. Border Patrol station in Fort Fairfield last week for active shooter response training.
The practice session, originally scheduled to occur at the Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, resulted in the use of Fort Fairfield’s border protection station to create real world scenarios for officers to hone their skills with hands-on training.
Officers were put to the task of mitigating an active shooter situation and entered chaotic yet realistic scenarios with the use of simunition, ammunition that fires like a standard bullet, but results in small paintball-like pellet “wound.” Participants were confronted with first-aid mannequins dressed to resemble real life victims, splayed on the ground and covered in fake blood. And opposing agents acting as “bad guys” put officers to the test as they came from multiple directions ready to attack.
Sgt. Shawn Newell of the Fort Fairfield Police Department admitted he hadn’t done any hands-on training since 1998 and was thankful to have the opportunity provided by U.S. Border Patrol to train in real world scenarios.
“This is invaluable training, it doesn’t cost the agency anything, probably the best hands-on training you can get,” Newell said.
Newell says becoming complacent as an officer will get you killed and he wishes local agencies could have hands-on training more frequently.
“We’re trying to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. A luxury to this training is that we have multiple agencies here, we’re all getting on the same page as far as training goes. If we’re responding to Presque Isle or Presque Isle is responding to us, border patrol is always backing up our agency, they’re invaluable to us here. If we can all be on the same page then that makes a better situation for all of us,” Newell said.
Use of force and firearms instructors developed each training scenario and guided teams of officers through a tactical maze with the goal of strengthening their communication skills.
Jared Howard, U.S. Border Patrol agent and firearms instructor at the Fort Fairfield station is passionate about keeping local law enforcement officers as highly trained as possible.
“Our response, our ability to come in and effectively eliminate [an active shooter] means less people die,” Howard said.
Howard hopes more trainings will arise and that someday Aroostook County will be home to a permanent facility where officers can train any time of day. Howard says he looks for the same energy out of his officers as he expects of himself, “I want their passion I want their focus, that’s important.”
According to John Bonner, acting patrol agent in charge of the Fort Fairfield station, there is a learning curve to the training and it isn’t focused on taking an agent or a patrol officer and making them a SWAT team member.
“It’s really to reintroduce some skills that are perishable. They may be learning things they knew years ago, but haven’t had a chance to retrain, which is one of the things that precipitated us wanting to put it on in the first place.
“We would certainly like to host it again. The other component to this is that we all work together and part of the border patrol strategy is taking a whole of government approach to border security. If we have the misfortune of having something like this in Aroostook County it would be people from all the different departments responding so having this contact helps,” Bonner said.
Instructor Howard made it clear that learning in a classroom environment will only take you so far, “you can look at a Powerpoint for two hours and not have any idea how this is really done, we need to put a sim-gun in your hand and have you actually do it. It’s a progressive process, you start with nothing and you build on that.”
