LA JUNTA, Colo. (KOAA) — School resource officers and law enforcement in rural parts of Colorado are being trained on what to do in the event of a school shooting.
FASTER Colorado leads courses like this across the state. FASTER stands for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response.
The non-profit was selected as one of two recipients of the Enhanced School Safety Incident Response (ESSIR) Grant from the Colorado Office of School Safety. The $117,000 grant provides funding to deliver no-cost training to active-duty law enforcement officers, including five training sessions in rural Colorado communities.
Quinn Cunningham is a lead instructor with FASTER Colorado. During a recent training in La Junta, he told News5 what got him involved with the organization.
“Like most of the instructors, I was involved in an active killer situation, and it was a course correction in my life," Cunningham said. "That’s why I’m dumping everything into this because I don’t want to see any more victims. I can’t be at every fight, I can’t be there for them, but I can give them the best training that I possibly can.”
In the past 20 years, seven of the 10 deadliest school shootings in the United States happened in non-metro areas.
"Colorado has had more than its share of school shootings, and we have thought from the beginning that law enforcement in Colorado needs to have access to the best possible training if, God forbid, one of those school shootings happen in their community," Laura Carno, Executive Director of FASTER Colorado said. “Bringing this training out to the rural agencies gives them access to that level of training that usually agencies only get in that Denver-Metro area."
Otero County Sheriff's Office Undersheriff Rick Guzman took his first FASTER Colorado training in May. The most important part of the course to him was "building on the fundamentals."
"We all have our low-level of training, and then we build on that as we go through our career," Guzman said. "With this, it's just breaking everything down to make things faster and smoother in order to stop whatever threat is in front of us.”
Sergeant Brian Lovato is a school resource officer with the East Otero School District. During his active shooter training, he emphasized the importance of training alongside other rural law enforcement agencies.
“We are a small enough community that if something was to happen, all the local agencies will respond together," Lovato said. "When we come out here and train together, we know how everybody works."
In June, FASTER Colorado will also host trainings in Weld and Larimer counties.
“Learning is messy, it’s disjointed, it’s ugly, but it’s okay to fail in this environment," Cunningham said. "If they fail in this environment, hopefully they won’t fail out there.”
Email Senior Reporter Meghan Glova at meghan.glova@koaa.com.
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