Authorities have recently elevated their commitment to active shooter response training, celebrating another officer becoming a qualified instructor. In a social media post, the department extended their congratulations to Sgt. Frank Blaustein for completing the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Instructor School, a 40-hour program. White Settlement Police Department's Facebook announcement noted that Blaustein now joins the ranks of Corporal David Streif, Corporal Brandon Tibbit, and Officer Bryan Conley as instructors for their agency and partner agencies across North Texas.
This addition to WSPD's instructional staff comes when active shooter response preparedness has become a non-negotiable mandate of law enforcement agencies state-wide. Hardly an achievement in isolation, the department has expressed a longstanding commitment to such training well before it was enshrined into law. At the legislative level, every Texas law enforcement agency is now aligned under the same directive — for officers to be schooled in the ALERRT techniques, the training grounds for first responders responding to active shooters.
ALERRT's approach has been shaped around research-informed and experience-tested methods to prepare law enforcement personnel for one of the gravest scenarios they might ever confront. The importance of such training has been underscored by the grim tapestry of public mass shootings, a stark reality that has made responding to highly volatile and dangerous situations a skill of critical need among police forces.
