A sheriff’ s deputy secures the perimeter of Stringfellow Elementary School during an all agency active shooter exercise. Photo by Adelia Ladson
He told them he would start out by briefly telling them what the law enforcement response was and, then, Hart would tell them how EMS and Fire responded.
“ Anywhere that we see there might be a conflict, we wanna iron it out in training first,” Moore said.“ It’ s also gonna require some mutual trust and professional cooperation.”
He said he was a firm believer in none of them were as smart as all of them. He said they could work and figure it out together.
“ The lessons that we learn are written on the gravestones of others,” he told them was his favorite quote, which I found to unfortunately ring true when he recounted previous incidents of active shooters across the United States.
“ We’ ve got to start learning from each other,” he said.
During the class, Moore recapped the shooting at Virginia Tech, in 2007; the Navy Ship Yard in Washington DC, in 2013; the Pulse Night Club incident in Orlando, in 2016; the Harvest Music Festival shooting in Las Vegas, in 2017; the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School incident, in 2018, in Parkland, Florida; and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.
He started out, however, with the shooting that seemed to kick-off the trend of school shootings over the past 26 years, with what had happened at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999. He used this to explain the law enforcement“ priority of life scale” model that was revised after this incident.
“ This is a model to help us make decisions in tactical environments. Number one would be hostages. Number two would be innocent bystanders,” he said.
He clarified the reason that hostages were before innocent bystanders was because hostages were harder to save because they were under a more active threat.
“ After that, would be public safety. That would be law enforcement. For us, officer safety is not number one,” Moore said.“ Officer safety is not number one. It’ s never been number one.”
He clarified that he was not speaking for Fire and EMS but for law enforcement, officers were number three on the“ priority of life scale.” He then said, that number four on the list was suspects because officers are not the judge, the jury or executioner.
“ If we shoot somebody, once it is safe to do so we try to fix them. It’ s what we do. It’ s called professionalism,” he added.“ Our job is to put him in front of a court. They gave us that gun in case we need it. Sometimes we need it. But we have to render aid.”
He said, speaking for law enforcement, one of the things that they keep learning was that,“ We do a really good job of running in and shooting that guy. Bad guy down. High-fives all around. That part takes us a few minutes. The next six hours of getting this mess cleaned up, law enforcement as a community isn’ t doing a phenomenal job of it. That’ s the focus of this training.”
He said once they get in and the bad guy is down, they still have a lot of people injured who need a higher level of care and if they don’ t get them to it, more people will die.
“ If law enforcement is gonna ask other disciplines of public
40 MoultrieScene AUGUST 2025