Police & Fire personnel conduct training exercise

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A volunteer "victim" is carried to an ambulance as part of a joint Anacortes Police and Fire department training exercise at the middle school on Saturday. The exercise was to practice response to a potential shooter at the school, according to APD Captain Lou D’Amelio.

D’Amelio said the plan was to repeat the exercise all day until responders involved were comfortable with what they were doing. This is the first time the two departments had practiced response to a report of a shooter at a school.

The training exercise involved a number of adult volunteers to play roles as students, teachers and other school workers. The exercise involved various kinds of injuries.

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The plan for the exercise, according to D’Amelio, was for first responders to locate a reported "shooter" in the middle school, defuse the threat, then clear the building of any other potential threats. They would locate victims, pull them out of the school, triage the injured and use ambulances to take the seriously injured from the scene. 

D'Amelio called the exercise a visual distraction for people in the area, but it did not involved an actual emergency.