Lovell Police Dept. hosts high intensity, high-threat training

The Lovell Police Department last week hosted an in-depth training course for first responders in a high-threat situation conducted by Thunder Ranch, Inc., a training facility out of Lakeview, Oregon – a course local officers are calling the best training of their career.

According to Town of Lovell administrator Jed Nebel, the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC) course was held Monday and Tuesday, Aug. 25-26, at the Lovell Community Center. Among the agencies attending were the LPD, Sheridan PD, Cody PD, Basin PD, Park County Search and Rescue and Big Horn REA.

Nebel said attendees were taught “lifesaving lessons in high-threat, pre-hospital environments such as active shooter situations,” adding that the training provided “a framework for responders to manage injuries and save lives by integrating immediate medical care with operational constraints, focusing on hemorrhage control, airway management and safe movement of casualties in different threat phases.”

Nebel said he tried to work out training through Thunder Ranch in the past, but it never came to fruition, but after the shooting in Byron earlier this year and the follow-up provided to responding agencies, the people at Thunder Ranch thought about some further training.

“They said, ‘Hey, rather than firearms training, maybe we should do some emergent care training,’ which we thought was a very smart idea,” Nebel said.

He said the 16-hour, 20-person course offered MARCH assessment training, referring to massive hemorrhage, airway, respiration, circulation and head injury training including instruction on how to stabilize victims and move them from hot zones where a shooter is active to safer warm or cold zones.

The trainers included Thunder Ranch employees Tony Alvarez and Ron Hernandez.

Nebel said all of the participants came away amazed by the intensive training they received.

“They were blown away by it,” Nebel said. “I think it was very beneficial. It pretty much makes people think about those types of high threat situations, the need to react fast for life saving measures and to evacuate people to safer environments so that trained professionals can get in and work on them, whether it’s taking them to the hospital or a staging area where paramedics are, and with today’s environment, this type of training is huge.

“It’s great for law enforcement but also Search and Rescue. We had a Big Horn REA employee there. They’re out in the middle of nowhere working. So now he has life saving measures that could save his own life, or another person’s life, should tragedy happen. I think it’s a good training for anyone, because you can use it whether you’re an outdoorsman or whether you are in law enforcement.”

Nebel said Sgt. Steve Coleman and three patrol officers attended the course. A Town of Lovell employee and Mayor Tom Newman also attended, along with Nebel.

Officer reaction

LPD Sgt. Coleman and officer Dusty Schultz both came away impressed with the training they received.

“From my standpoint, where we are so isolated out here and our backup could be a long time away, it’s the most in-depth tactical medical training that I’ve been to in my 20-plus years of service,” Coleman said in an interview Tuesday.

“I second that,” Schultz said. “I spent a little bit of boot camp going through combat medic training in the Marine Corps, and then a little bit in the fleet. But it was never this extensive. It teaches quick, rapid action that has the potential to save lives when it comes to serious and bodily injury.”

“Not only your life, but the life of someone else if you have to wait for backup or help,” Coleman added.

Asked what made the training better than others he had attended, Coleman said the attention to detail was outstanding.

“It was more in depth,” he said. “It was not just plug a hole. They went into ‘this is what you do if you see this; if you have this, you’ve got to do this first.’ They broke it down, the time that it takes to bleed out completely, the proper way to put on a tourniquet and where to place a tourniquet, when to plug a hole with blood clot, when to put on a patch for a sucking chest wound. So, yeah, they just went in depth on how to pick up a patient, one man two man, three man and extract them. And doing it under cover and concealment. And so, yeah, it was pretty in-depth. And after we trained on the medical side, then they send us into a tactical side, where we had to go and clear rooms and stop an active shooter.”

“They created a high stress environment, so it kind of puts you in that high stress mentality while you’re in this training, which is, I think, crucial when it comes to training like the real thing, as close to the real thing as you can get,” Schultz added. “They talked about mass casualty events, mass injury events. You know, they say mass casualty, but a lot of these people are savable if you’re prepared for the situation, which is what they were trying to get us to do, be prepared for a situation like that. You don’t realize how important tourniquets are until you go through a class like that.”

Having top equipment is important, Coleman noted the training stressed.

“They wanted to make sure the equipment that we had was the best equipment out there, not some knockoff from Amazon, so they went through that with us and the reasons why,” he said. “I can tell you this: we have a med bag that has the top of the line equipment, but as far as the equipment that us as officers carry on our body, we will be upping that standard.”

Schultz said word has spread about the training, creating interest in a future course, noting, “Just since the class happened, several people that I’ve come in contact with have all stated that they are very interested in a class like that, because, like I said, it’s very realistic. It’s as real as you can get without being real.

“That’s the hard thing about training. You always try to do the real thing as close as you possibly can. And these guys seem to, because of their experience, know exactly how to make that feel as real as possible without being real. And they’re all currently still active as far as whatever field they’re in. So it was great training.”

“You could tell that they weren’t just teachers; they’ve actually lived it,” Coleman said. “That makes a huge difference when you’re trying to learn from them, someone that just learned from a book and is trying to teach you as opposed to real life experience. You can tell in the training and your learning process.”