Trigger warning: this article contains mentions of gun violence
A Texas State training facility is credited as playing a key role in the police response to the March 1 mass shooting on West Sixth Street in Austin, which resulted in the deaths of three victims and the shooting suspect.
Austin Police Department (APD) Chief Lisa Davis credited the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center in saving lives during and after the shooting.
“In Texas, we are fortunate to have the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training — that is the ALERRT Center through Texas State,” Davis said during a March 2 press conference. “There is no doubt that the training and coordinated response with EMS saved lives on this night.”
The ALERRT Center was created in 2002 as a partnership between Texas State, the San Marcos Police Department and the Hays County Sheriff’s Office. According to James Keith, director of external relations for ALERRT, the center is now a world-renowned leader in active attack response training.
“We’re also focused on training integrated response, so having police, fire [and] EMS all work together in unison, under one command whenever these sort of incidents happen,” Keith said. “We saw in Austin, that’s exactly what their first responders did, their police, fire, EMS, they operated under one unified command, and they were able to essentially stop this gunman in a really quick amount of time, and then they switched into the protocols that we support and promote, stop the killing, stop the dying and assist the wounded.”
According to Keith, ALERRT training has also contributed to more frequent police provision of emergency aid to victims. APD provided emergency aid to victims before EMS arrived on the scene.
“That’s something that now we are pushing in all of our training is don’t wait for EMS to come in to provide that medical support,” Keith said. “The actions taken by an officer once that threat is eliminated can really help save lives. It could be something as simple as putting on a tourniquet or, in some cases, transporting that injured person in their patrol car to a hospital.”
The ALERRT Center provides a variety of training types. Keith said APD Department completed several different courses through ALERRT.
“We work hand in hand with all of those agencies in Austin. In fact, we have a very good relationship with them,” Keith said. “When this incident unfolded, and social media was flooded with videos from the incident, we were seeing firsthand those officers and those firefighters and EMS folks implementing ALERRT practices.”
Makenna Simon, finance freshman, said she was near the Rooftop Aquarium on 6th Street on March 1, shortly after the shootings occurred.
Simon said she arrived at 6th around 2 a.m. and noticed a flood of cop cars and heavily-armed officers running down the street.
“We were just so oblivious to the whole thing, and it’s just kind of scary because we weren’t even that far away,” Simon said. “If we had decided to start our night over there instead of where we had started off, we could be [in] a different situation right now.”
Simon said that at one point, cops were pushing through the crowd to reach the crime scene.
“We had walked down to [Indeed Tower], and we saw a security guard,” Simon said. “We were just casually walking out, so we asked him, ‘Hey, do you know what happened? Is everything all right?’ and he just looks at us dead in the eye [and] tells us there was a mass shooting and we kind of all just froze.”
Simon said it’s a hard decision to not go back out at night with your friends, but it’s “taking that chance that [a shooting] might not happen the next time.”
