Albany Police Department conducts active shooter training at Turner Job Corps

ALBANY — As the number of shooting incidents at public venues officers across the country continues to rise, the Turner Job Corps security team is now better prepared to handle such an incident thanks to completing active shooter training administered by the Albany Police Department (APD) on Friday.

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Turner Job Corps Security Manager Robert Gervin said the purpose of the training was to ensure that campus security would know how to handle the situation if there was ever a shooting on the job corps campus.

“The staff and students will know exactly what to do if that would ever occur,” said Gervin of the training. “It’s about being proactive at all times and making sure you have the best training possible. I wanted it to be a real life situation in case it ever occurred here at the center. Active shooters happen every day pretty much, so it could happen here.”

Gervin said the training came about when he contacted Albany Police Chief Michael Persley, who immediately offered the department’s support and organized a team to conduct the training.

“Turner Job Corps is a small program but safety and security is our main concern,” said Gervin. “We partnered with the Albany Police Department so we could be proactive in training our students and staff.”

Members of the security team, made up of 18 full time and 12 on call staffers, underwent the training in an empty building on the Turner Job Corps campus where they engaged in real life drills conducted by APD officers.

In addition to the security team, job corps students received training as well and were used as extras who played the roles of victims during the live scenarios.

Gervin said Friday’s live drills were the third piece of training following classroom training that has been conducted throughout the year, to give students and staff as much information as possible.

“They get the classroom training then they get the field training,” said Gervin. “All of it just comes together at the end of the year. We’re trying to our best to protect our students and our staff at all times.”

The active shooter drills not only helped better prepare Turner job Corps students and staff for what to do in the the event of a campus shooting, they also learned what kind of response to expect from the APD.

“The main thing that I want to teach the officers is an immediate response,” said APD Lt. Antonio Fletcher who coordinated the training. “We’ve learned from other events, unfortunately, that time is of the essence and you’ve got to keep moving, get to the scene, assess what you’ve got, and hopefully save lives. I want the center to understand what type of response we’d do. God forbid they every were to have a real life, active scenario, shooting out here, now they would know what to expect from the Albany Police Department.”

Fletcher added that Friday’s drills also added an extra layer of training for APD officers in addition to the active shooter training they receive twice a year.

“After this training we do what we call an after action review,” Fletcher said. “It’s not a beat up session. It’s for them to understand, ‘yeah you might have done some things wrong, but it’s training.’ We’d rather that happened here than for you to go out in the field and do something wrong. So, this training is good for everybody.”