Riley County Police Department looks to bring new approach to age-old problem

RILEY COUNTY (KSNT) - A local police department creates its own training to combat long-standing issues.

You never know when a dangerous situation might occur. Whether that be a school shooting or a mass shooting that happened in Kansas City at the Chiefs Super Bowl rally. So, The Riley County Police Department (RCPD) is looking to provide their officers the tools to eliminate a threat before it happens.

There are many courses out there for law enforcement that teach them how to deescalate a situation. These courses include Alert training, ALICE training and how to run, hide and fight. Although, according to Brian Peete, the Director of the RCPD, there isn't an exact course to stop the problem before it happens.

"There's a lot of information that's out there, but it's in a lot of different pIaces," Peete said. "So, we couldn't find a training, so we decided that we would go ahead and make one. I got several people together who are subject matter experts, in my opinion, to help me devise a course and the course would be three days for police officers and mental health professionals."

This is something that the Riley County Attorney, Barry Wilkerson says could be a game changer.

"A new approach to an age-old problem," Wilkerson said. "We would like to, you know, no body wins when somebody hurts somebody, or kills somebody. And if we can stop it before it gets there we want to do that."

Some of the tactics that will be taught in this course involve tactics of mass shooters, behaviors of concern, characteristics and triggering events, basic phycology and more. All of which are learning points that are backed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

"Back in the early 2000's, the FBI did substantial amount of research on active shooters and what are the behavior indicators or the clues or some of the things that they've seen that tend to be kind of common across the spectrum," Peete said.

For Wilkerson, he says this training could do more than just save potential victims lives.

"I think this is just another tool so to speak that we're trying to do," Wilkerson said. "Try to create to steer somebody in a direction in getting them help, or getting them what they need so they don't commit an atrocious crime."

The Riley County Police Department is hoping to get this course started between late spring and early summer.

Keep up with the latest breaking news in northeast Kansas by downloading our mobile app and by signing up for our news email alerts. To download our Storm Track Weather App, click here.