TUNKHANNOCK, Pa. — "We have a saying in our sheriff's office: failure to train is training to fail," said Jon Record, Susquehanna County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy.
That was the motivation behind this afternoon's training at the Wyoming County Courthouse - preparing for the case of an active shooter inside the building.
"It's very eye-opening, a lot of things going through your head: what to do, how to react," said Record.
During the training, first responders from Sullivan, Susquehanna, and Wyoming Counties went through several possible outcomes.
"Not every scenario ends in lethal force. Some are other means, perhaps surrender, perhaps self-injury. And that way, we train for the diversity, so it's not the same outcome every time. We don't want our officers to think, 'we're always going to do this," said Bob Roberts, Wyoming County Sheriff.
"Coming into this as an active shooter instructor, I got to play a victim today and see the other side of it and see how scary the situation can be and retain some skills that may be victims could use someday, that I spread in the field," said Record.
It's part of a larger project here in Wyoming County, improving the security inside the courthouse.
COVID-19 slowed the project. The active-shooter training is the final phase.
"And that's to test all those policies that we put in place from the previous 18, 19 months and out into a human form, and into a setting where we can evaluate the performance of the involved agencies," said Roberts.