by Bob Beach
Allamakee County Sheriff Clark Mellick recently led employees at the Allamakee County Courthouse in an afternoon of training and instruction on how to handle what Mellick called a "single-killer situation." Mellick said that such situations had previously been referred to as "single-shooter situations," but recent attacks with knives changed that. He told the group that until recently, the standard response to a mass shooting situation had been to lock everyone down, hiding under desks, until law enforcement could arrive.
Mellick said that the training given to courthouse employees takes into account the motives of mass killers, the natural instincts of bystanders and the reality of law enforcement response time. The result is a response system (as opposed to response plan) to reduce casualties. The training program has been named ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.