COLLIERVILLE, Tenn. — Collierville Police are preparing for a multi-agency active shooter exercise Friday morning.
School’s out for the summer in Collierville, so Thursday it was quiet at Collierville High School on East Shelby Drive. But come bright and early Friday morning, the campus will be transformed into an active shooter training site.
“There’s going to be a lot of public safety vehicles, police, fire and medical that’s going to be on campus tomorrow at Collierville High School for training, and we just didn’t want to alarm the residents,” said Major David Townsend with the Collierville Police Department.
That’s why Collierville Police posted a message on their Facebook page, alerting folks who live nearby of the training exercise starting at 7 a.m. involving not only Collierville Police, Fire and Rescue but other agencies as well.
“We’ve opened the door to Memphis Police, Shelby County Sheriff, Fayette County, Piperton, Bartlett Police and other agencies around in the Mid-South area,” Townsend said.
This active shooter training event had actually been planned about three months ago, long before Tuesday’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
But Collierville had its own mass shooting incident in September 2021, leaving one Kroger shopper dead and 14 others injured.
“This has definitely placed a light on our training a little bit more,” Townsend said. “We just want to make sure we’re prepared and ready for anything that could possibly happen.”
He says police have several scenarios planned for the day-long training Friday.
“You want to train for the worst and hope for the best,” Townsend said.
Bennie Cobb, a retired captain with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department who now runs Eagle Eye Security and Training Services, says this multi-agency event helps insure everyone is on the same page in what he calls are “ever-changing” protocols.
“You may not have the opportunity to have the full SWAT team or TAC unit there, so the protocol now is to go to a ‘rapid response,'” Cobb said. “The first two or three officers on the scene in an active shooter situation get together and attack and try to neutralize that threat.”
The training exercise is expected to last until 3 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon.