Add The New York Post on Google This went off the rails.
A Florida sheriff’s office posted a wild video of civilian academy students participating in a simulated mass shooting last Tuesday — with participants screaming and haphazardly firing blanks at each other.
The jarring footage — set to blaring rock anthems — shows one part of a six-week civilian academy program designed by the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office to give residents a behind-the-scenes look at the reality of modern law enforcement.
“Every year they’re surprised at how nervous they got, how much their heart rate got up, how much their adrenaline went up,” a sheriff’s office spokesperson said of the intensity of the exercise. “And that’s a lot of what you see with the smiles, that’s like a nervous laughter.
“You know, when you don’t know what to do, sometimes you’re just kind of laughing at yourself. They know there’s no real danger, but still.”
The academy students are a motley crew of community members — some are retired teachers or public sector employees, but none are planning a career in law enforcement.
During the program’s second week, the focus shifted to the school resource unit, plunging unsuspecting citizens into a pressurized mass shooting threat scenario.
An actual school cop played the role of the active shooter, while youths eyeing a career in law enforcement — known as local Explorer Cadets — acted as the terrified, screaming students.
It was up to the unsuspecting civilian academy to navigate the chaos and neutralize the threat with training pistols that fired blanks.
To dial up the terror, the department rigged the area with “shot boxes” — devices that blast blinding strobe lights and the deafening crack of simulated gunfire.
Participants even had to fumble with keys to unlock “classroom” doors under extreme duress.
The sheriff’s office noted that a person loses 30% of their fine motor control during a high-stress, life-or-death situation.
“That’s part of why we have them unlock the door, because when you get in a situation like that, 30% of your fine motor control goes away,” the spokesperson said.
“So trying to unlock that door with all that noise and all that chaos is part of the exercise. When our school resource deputies train, they also have to unlock a door to get to where the practice threat is.”
Some participants were caught on camera nervously laughing as their bodies went into full fight-or-flight mode.
Gloria Rabynski, 49, told The Post that “obviously I knew that it was an exercise, but I was just thinking like, ‘wow, if this is me knowing that it’s an exercise, I cannot even begin to imagine what our deputies go through in a situation similar.'”
A member of the Highlands County Board of County Commissioners, Rabynski joined the civilian academy to better understand the role of law enforcement in the community.
“I decided to get involved because, obviously, most of us think that we know what law enforcement do. But I wanted to see the other side of the story,” she said.
“I wanted to see really what takes everything for them to be able to do what they do.”
What shocked her the most was the process behind what happens.
“The decision-making process — It’s unbelievable,” she added.
The ultimate goal of the civilian academy isn’t to recruit residents, but to show them exactly the kind of split-second, life-saving decisions that are required to protect a school.
“Our deputies are not trained to wait for backup,” the sheriff’s office rep said.
“They go. When they hear gunfire, they go to the gunfire.”
