Simulated shootout at the commando corral

CANNON AIR FORCE BASE — Bodies lay strewn about on the floor like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Cries for help reverberated off the walls as four-man teams searched for the creator of the carnage. Gunshots cut through the cries and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air.

Fortunately, as real as this scenario seemed, it wasn’t.

The location was one of Cannon’s vacated dormitories and the action on May 8 was a simulated shooting, part of a training course taught by the National Tactical Officers Association.

Created in 1983, the NTOA teaches courses ranging from basic SWAT to crisis negotiation to law enforcement agencies across the country. The course Cannon hosted included security forces, Clovis SWAT, and a few other agencies.

“This is the first time NTOA has conducted training on Cannon,” said Master Sgt. Kimberly Grewe, 27th Special Operations Security Forces Squadron.

More than 10 agencies participated in the three-day course.

The course, Patrol Response to Active Shooter, teaches law enforcement officers how to handle deployment/rapid intervention techniques.

Some of the topics covered are a history of active shooter situations such as school shootings, movement tactics, and classroom instruction.

“We’re training to respond if there was a shooter inside a largely populated facility, such as schools, the Base Exchange, or large office buildings,” said Grewe.

The first two days of training are in preparation of the third day, when four-man fire teams run through different scenarios. The scenarios range from one gunman in a room to a hidden gunman waiting to be apprehended.

Increasing the realism and tension felt in an active shooter situation was the use of paintball guns by the “bad guys” and the use of simunitions by the fire teams. Simunitions are similar to live rounds and use gunpowder to eject brass shells, firing rounds like a paintball.

The distractions of gunfire and casualties escalate over the course of the third day, testing the reactions of the fire teams. All remain under the watchful eye of the NTOA instructors to be critiqued after completing the scenario.

“The course will prove itself extremely worthwhile and valuable if we ever have an active shooter situation on base,” Grewe said.

Grewe and her colleagues say they learned quite a bit from this exercise and hope to work with the NTOA again soon.