Armed law enforcement in full assault gear breaching the local high school may be a disconcerting sight.

But the alternative – an active school shooter with no prepared emergency response – is a far worse scenario.

That was the impetus behind a full drill recently at Kingfisher High School involving a combined emergency response of police, sheriff’s office personnel, emergency medical services, Kingfisher Public Schools, emergency management, the local hospital and air ambulance service, county 911 dispatch, Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the state Local Emergency Planning Committee.

Oklahoma Baptist Disaster Relief provided lunch for all participants.

Adam Honeman, who teaches Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training Classes at Northwest Technology Center in Alva, provided protective gear for the exercise and assisted with the training.

Officers who participated received CLEET credit, Sheriff Dennis Banther said.

Kingfisher school personnel played the part of victims, giving first responders the opportunity to practice safely extricating actual shooting victims after law enforcement secured the building.

Even though all his officers have attended a weeklong intensive training in active shooter response, Kingfisher Police Chief David Catron said the drill was an invaluable opportunity to practice coordination with other agencies.

“It’s good to work with other agencies and the fire department so everybody knows what is going on and our shortcomings that we need to work on,” he said.

“Most of the time when we go to training, we only see the law enforcement side of things.”

“It was beneficial in showing us where we needed to focus our attention to be better prepared for an active shooter event,” Bather said.

“Our office will work on taking those steps to ensure we have covered the areas identified.

“I felt like our dispatch did an excellent job handling the overload of calls that came in as well as handling the numerous duties of dispatching each of the respective agencies who are needed.”

Banter said dispatchers even dealt with a computer glitch, which is likely to happen in a real life situation.

“You do realize that it can be total chaos in a training exercise and that tells youjust how bad it could be if it was to really occur,” Catron said.