Police officers, firefighters and paramedics in Joliet participated in active threat drills as part of a three-day conference.
The hallway of the Renaissance Center in downtown Joliet turned into a mock rescue drill for police, fire, and paramedics as they train for active threat situations, including school shootings.
Medics ran through all scenarios for triage while law enforcement neutralized the threat Friday afternoon.
“We have a lot of small towns around this city and what this is going to look like in Joliet is totally different from a small town if they have less resources,” Joliet Fire Battalion Chief of Operations Jim Blake said.
Blake explained how the tactical response has changed over the years involving SWAT, fire and police.
“They [SWAT] would come in, the fire department would sit outside and wait for the threat to be neutralized,” he said. “Now with the event of this happening regularly, they learned that while we’re waiting for all of that to happen; all of these kids are bleeding out in the meantime, so they changed their tactics. Police have changed their tactics, they get there—police are going right in after the bad guy—that’s the bravest thing I could even imagine in my life."
For the past three days, first responders have been taking part in an "Active Threat and Mental Awareness" conference. They’re learning different strategies for response, the warning signs, ways to manage and offer support to their communities after trauma.
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“The threats come, we have to be ready for it. You don’t have to be a big city,” Joliet Fire Deputy Chief of Human Services John Koch said. “In fact a small community is a place where they might take advantage of it.”
Police officers and firefighters told NBC Chicago what they’re doing and learning this afternoon is crucial and critical. They also heard from survivors of the Highland Park parade shooting and the first responders, who were on scene that day.
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“This time around, we wanted to bring everyone affected in to show what the impact was to the first responders, to the community, to the survivors and how did the community come together and heal,” Koch said.
While they hope incidents like this won’t happen in their town, they know this adds to their level of training and knowledge for when the real calls comes in.
“We are going to get through this together, because that’s the only way it could happen,” Koch said.
