Calif. Police, Fire Units Drill on Active Shooter Tactics

April 5, 2014
Chino fire and police were training on active shooter scenarios the same day as the shooting at Fort Hood.

April 05--CHINO -- On the day a soldier at Fort Hood, Texas, went on a shooting rampage, members of Chino fire and police began training to learn how to handle an "active shooter scenario."

"Practice makes perfect," fire captain Chris Cragg said. "If the situation ever arises, and we have to go into a hostile situation, this training will immediately surface to that individual's head that took the training and emergency personnel should then work together like a well-oiled machine and hopefully save lives."

During the exercise, Chino firefighters and police responded to a simulated active shooter at Walnut Elementary School and coordinated their efforts to rescue victims.

This is the fifth year officials have trained together to be well versed in each others' abilities in order to get the job done when and if the time comes.

In recent years, Chino firefighters and police were faced with a real-life shooting scenario.

On a terrorizing Sunday afternoon in January 2008, Jose Arturo Garcia, 25, of Chino, was shot and killed by a police officer inside Chino's Rio Ranch Market near the corner of Riverside Drive and Oaks Avenue.

Garcia walked into the market armed with a gun when he approached his ex-girlfriend's sister and shot her in the chest before shooting his ex-girlfriend in the arm. Both women survived.

Chino police and fire responded and eventually stopped Garcia's rampage when, from around a blind corner, Officer Nick Marotta fired his assault rifle, killing Garcia with a shot to the head.

That real life scenario and others nationwide preempted the way first responders entered into an active shooter situation.

"We now train to go in with law enforcement instead of waiting on the sidelines," Cragg said. "With the mass shootings that have occurred in this country we need to work side by side with police. We need to learn their lingo and be able to work as a team to save lives."

On Wednesday in Kileen, Texas, Fort Hood gunman Ivan Lopez opened fire on the military base killing three and wounding 16 others before turning the gun on himself.

"It's better to train for this type of situation than to try and figure it out as it happens," Cragg said. "We need to be better and stronger as a team and that's why this is so important."

Copyright 2014 - San Bernardino County Sun, Calif.

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