Tumwater’s active shooter response policy and training clarified today

Tumwater Police Lieutenant Ken Driver explained his department’s active shooter response policies during the Public Health & Safety Committee’s  meeting today.

Driver stated that through the policy, the department plans for rapid response to crises and to coordinate planning with other emergency response services.

“If a suspect is actively engaged in the infliction of serious bodily harm or other life-threatening activity towards others, officers should take immediate action, if reasonably practicable, while requesting additional assistance,” said Driver as he presented the training and support received by the police force.

Police Commander Jay Mason also discussed the importance of the active violence response in the protection of children in the community.

“Dealing with incidents involving children is one of the paramount of our duties and in this, we have no margin of error. We take this duty very seriously, and we train extensively,” Mason added.

Mason clarified the details of the After Action Reports (AAR) to Councilmembers Leatta Dahlhoff and Angela Jefferson, as they further probed the officers on details of the policy that garnered significant public attention.

“Whenever After Action Reports start to come in, a lot of stuff that comes to the media is never mentioned or becomes inaccurate or not fully true. We try to wait for the valid AAR. We then share key lessons learned with our partners because this is a massive-response law enforcement agency,” Mason elaborated.

Mason explained that the names of the police officers who undergo training are not published because they would not want to showcase who were training and who were not training because of the positive and negative effects.

The department also considers the involvement of stakeholders in community engagement as Police chief Jon Weiks said, “One of our priorities is engaging the community. Most of the major retailers and state agencies come to us directly.”

Various businesses have received training to deal with these kinds of emergencies, according to Jon Weiks, Tumwater’s police chief.

“We meet with all of the businesses, and with this kind of opportunity, we talk about what people want to have. That makes the most sense with the retailers,” Weiks added.

The Active Shooter Response of the Tumwater Police Department enabled the police and community stakeholders to train on relevant incident responses such as first aid, basic trauma care, lockdown procedure, and incident management among other activities.