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Osceola SROs train for active school shooter
As Osceola County students prepare to go back to the classroom, school resource officers are preparing for the worst case scenario – a school shooter
OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. - As Osceola County students prepare to go back to the classroom, school resource officers are preparing for the worst-case scenario – a school shooter.
In a training video released by the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, shots are fired and deputies are running around campus and through school hallways to confront an active shooter.
None of them stop until the gunman is down on the ground and handcuffed.
Sheriff Marcos Lopez said he wants to assure parents that his deputies are trained to run toward danger.
"I can assure you that if something like this happened in Osceola County, my deputies are going to go in, confront the gunman right away," Lopez said. "We will not be setting up or staging. We will be running towards the threat and engaging the threat immediately."
If an active shooter were to open fire on campus, he said his deputies would have instant access to a live feed of the cameras inside the school to help them identify the shooter and respond as quickly as possible.
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But with the help of new gun detection technology and artificial intelligence that he’s testing out, he wants to prevent a tragedy from ever happening.
"We’ll be installing software that helps detect the presence of a gun and alerts us directly," Lopez said. "If we get an alert, we can notify our school resource officers and deputies at the schools immediately and then dispatch additional units. This technology will hopefully prevent things from happening before they even start."
Sheriff Lopez is also equipping high school resource officers with body shields and body cameras.
The goal is to also get them to the SRO’s in middle and elementary schools.
He said that eventually installing new technology in all of the schools will help keep kids safe and focused on their education.
"If we can get this implemented in every school in Osceola County it would be phenomenal," Lopez said. "But there’s a cost. There’s a cost for safety and it’s not cheap."
So he’s planning to approach commissioners about sharing the cost with the schools and law enforcement to implement his full safety plan.