October 30, 2018

Last week, the Morristown Police Department’s (MPD) tactical units came together for their annual joint training.  The focus was on lessons learned from real life barricaded subjects and active shooters.

The presentations began with Lieutenant Kevin Hite of the Kingsport Police Department.  He focused on a barricaded subject incident that occurred in November 2017.  Captain John Chambers, Chattanooga Police Department, also addressed lessons learned from the active shooter incident at the military installations in July 2015.  The training concluded with Newport Chief of Police Maurice Shults.  Shults discussed a barricaded incident in 1994 where a Cocke County Sheriff’s Deputy lost his life. Tactical teams were able to take the lessons learned from each of these scenarios and discuss how they train and how they would respond, if put in this situation.

The MPD’s tactical teams are available for call out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The Special Response Team is automatically called out for large-scale incidents such as barricaded subjects and active shooters; however, some of the lessons learned discussed using crisis negotiators to speak to barricaded subjects sooner, utilizing the Explosive Ordinance Detection Unit’s equipment to safely approach a building and utilizing public information officers to get the public the information as quickly as possible.  Police Chief Roger Overholt stated, “Learning from other agencies who have been involved in these scenarios help us plan for a possible incident in the future.  We can take the lessons and look at our processes and train to hopefully have a successful outcome, if faced with an incident.”

{Pictured:  Captain John Chambers speaking to MPD Tactical Teams}