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Perryville Police Department To Host Intruder Defense Training For Places Of Worship This Week

This Saturday, the Perryville Police Department will be hosting a free training event at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Perryville on how to defend against an intruder in places of worship.

The program they’ll be teaching, also known as ALICE training, is practiced nationwide and some overseas, and helps organizations to prepare groups for an active shooter event. ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate), was started by the husband of a schoolteacher in Texas, who discovered through his wife the lack of a standardized intruder training program in institutions.

Sergeant Garrett Schott, who will lead the training on Saturday, says participants will walk away with valuable tools.

“Hopefully after we teach this, nobody will ever have to use it,” says Schott. “But if it does come into play, organizations know that they’ve trained their either management, parishes, or churches; they know how to react, if this should happen.”

Schott says Alice training is universal in where it can be used, and can apply to houses, businesses, and schools. They receive 2-3 requests a year for the program, during which they go over many scenarios.

Some tips for protecting yourself during an aggressive intruder event include throwing items to distract the intruder, alternatives to getting out of a building, and how to barricade yourself, which is also known as “locking into place.”

You can attend the ALICE training event on Saturday, April 21 from 8:30 a.m. to noon at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Perryville. The event is free and open to the public.

 

For more information, see the Perryville Police Department's Facebook event here.