By Monique Valadez

CHINO – Residents and businesses alike are focusing on safety like never before following the tragic shooting last month at a San Bernardino county facility.
Last week, the city of Rancho Cucamonga, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the League of California Cities hosted a countywide active shooter training workshop, where nearly 200 law enforcement members, city officials, and businesspeople received training about how to handle such a crisis.  Also discussed was how well prepared we are as a community.

Chino PD was one of the agencies represented at the countywide training, and they say it’s critical to join forces and train collaboratively with other organizations.

“One of Chino PD’s main focuses when it comes to dealing with homeland security is education,” Chino Police Officer Ted Olgden said about the training last Wednesday. “It is equally as important to educate our personnel on active shooter situations and dealing with terrorism as it is the public.”

Chino officials said they plan to continue the training until all officers and personnel have completed the instruction. Preparing for any incident is a long-term endeavor.

“By consistently evaluating and updating our training content and methods, we can ensure that we are providing the public and personnel with relevant and useful information,” Olgden said.

For law enforcement, the recent heightened alert is just part of the job. Officers regularly train to prepare for worst case scenarios. The task at hand is to also educate the public for these situations.

“The other component of preparedness is again, education; providing the public with the knowledge and resources to respond and recover from an active shooter incident. Part of our training involves working with the school district and fire department to conduct drills/scenario based training, which is essential to ensure a unified response,” he added.

Olgden said that Chino PD has already initiated a Homeland Security workgroup to evaluate the department’s efforts related to terrorism activity, including focusing on education, prevention, detection and response.  He advises the public to be vigilant and aware of any potential threat or suspicious activity and report it to law enforcement personnel immediately.

“If you see something, say something!”