Colorado Voices
Why some Colorado schools have staff in firearms training
Clip | 5m 52sVideo has Closed Captions
Schools, particularly in rural areas, consider training and arming school staff
FASTER Colorado trains and certifies volunteer school teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons in approved Colorado schools
Colorado Voices
Why some Colorado schools have staff in firearms training
Clip | 5m 52sVideo has Closed Captions
FASTER Colorado trains and certifies volunteer school teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons in approved Colorado schools
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[gravel crunching] Downrange area's clear.
You can keep your eyes and ears off.
Time is your enemy.
When somebody comes into a school, intent on hurting children and hurting staff members.
The best that we can do to save children is to have somebody on the spot as close as possible to the point of attack.
[guns clicking] ...presentation on your target!
Visualize the red dot... We've had Columbine here, and STEM School here and Platte Canyon here.
Our school staff here should be the best trained in the country.
One, two, three times visually and manually check the chamber.
When schools make the decision to have armed security as a portion of their security team at school we provide that annual training for those armed security teams.
Stand by!
[guns clicking] Up!
[guns clicking] [paper flapping] [whistle] [gunshots] FASTER, stands for Faculty Administrator, Safety Training and Emergency Response.
Scan and assess!
Holster!
And so it comprises both the firearms portion of stopping an active threat in the school and also the medical portion of stopping catastrophic bleeding that could happen if there was some sort of a shooter on campus.
Our instructor team are all active duty law enforcement and first responders.
Many of them were on a SWAT call last night and then came today to teach a class.
Two rounds, center mass.
Combat reload.
One round, center mass.
FASTER Colorado has four different courses.
We have Level 1 through Level 4.
In Level 1, we effectively start them on a static range, which means it looks much like what's behind me here, and learn basic marksmanship skills, safety and operation of a firearm, how to holster and safely control a firearm in different types of threat environments.
And then finally, we put people through a force-on-force simulation in which we use simulation firearms.
This building tries to simulate as many possible room entries that we can encounter out in the real world.
So it's got long halls, big rooms, small rooms.
From the catwalk, instructors have kind of a bird's eye view of what's happening.
We can see students coming in through the main entries, how they enter rooms, how they clear through the building.
We try to mimic real-life scenarios.
So stuff that happens in the news.
We try to find scenarios We try to find scenarios that will match the criteria and what they'll be seeing.
and what they'll be seeing.
One tee box shot in the head as quickly as possible, maintaining accuracy.
Every time you come to a FASTER class, one of the first things we do is have you qualify in the Colorado POST qualification.
We shoot 27 rounds on a target from one yard all the way back to 25 yards.
Stand by!
[whistle] [gunshots] The regular POST test is 25 shots, and we add two additional shots here.
Holster!
We require 100% no-fail accuracy, which means they have to get 27 rounds out of 27 rounds on the target.
If they don't pass that qualification, they are permitted to attend the remainder of the course, but they do not receive a passing qualification score or a passing certification.
They only get an attendance certification.
In our Level 1 class, we average about 15% of people don't pass.
And we're okay with that.
It's a hard enough test that not everybody passes it.
Today we're at a Level 3 and 4 class, so by this time, these folks have been with us for four plus years.
Some of them have been with us the full eight years that we've been doing this training.
It's all volunteers, so, this isn't just a willy-nilly, we're pulling up with a wheelbarrow full of guns and saying, “Everybody come take one.” The people who volunteer for these programs, most of them have between years and decades of firearms experience.
About 40% of the people that we see are actually teachers.
So when you hear the language “armed teacher,” yes, some of them are teachers, but most of them are not.
So there are janitors and coaches and principals and school nurses, and we've had a lunch lady come through.
Going into this year, we were working with schools in 41 of Colorado's 178 school districts.
And we were right around 300 people that we've trained.
[gravel crunching] Of the schools that have come through FASTER, about 60% of them are rural schools.
The rural school districts are very interesting.
They were the earliest adopters of this because of how far away they are from law enforcement response and medical response.
Line appears ready, same drill!
Stand by!
[whistle] [gunfire] Typically in a rural setting is that you're, you're under a county sheriff, or you're under somebodys jurisdictions, but you have so many miles between the schools.
God bless what they're doing, God bless what they're doing, but they could be on the other side of the county when something happens.
when something happens.
[whistle] [gunfire] Of our staff members, we had 17 of 60 full time staff members that were carrying concealed.
Being able to draw if necessary, I think, allows people to understand that we don't have to wait for law enforcement.
That we can do something immediately.
Shooters, stand by!
[whistle] [gunshot] That's our goal, is to make schools look just like banks, or places where people assume that there is somebody armed there.
It should be the norm.
It shouldn't be the exception.
[paper flapping]
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