OKLAHOMA COUNTY (KFOR) – With the recent national attention on school shootings, the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office is working to train the entire Sheriff’s Office in knowing the ins and outs of every single school within Oklahoma county.  

The last couple of weeks deputies have been taking in-depth tours of schools within the county in hopes to be able to respond as efficiently as possible in case of an emergency. Specifically a school shooting since recently some parts schools throughout the country have experienced it.  

“Our guys are going through regular tours. Originally, we just had the school resource officers doing that. Now we want all of our deputies, all of our bomb squad members, all of our SWAT teams to know the way out of every one of these schools and to actually walk through and take a tour and know every nook and cranny of these schools,” said Aaron Brilbeck , Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer and deputy. 

Aaron Brilbeck with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office said it is important all deputies are trained in knowing every part of every school because of today’s climate. 

“God forbid, there’s an active shooting in any one of our schools. Getting to the shooter is our first priority and getting to that person as quickly as possible. So, the more that our deputies know their way around the school and are able to navigate through the school, the more seconds we can shave off, those seconds can save lives,” said Brilbeck. 

The Sheriff brought this goal to light so his office can know how to respond to the best of their ability in a school’s shooter situation.  

“Just go through each one of the schools and know the areas of the schools, know how to open certain doors, know where the closets are, where the janitor closets are, how to access the roof, just everything they can about those schools,” said Brilbeck.  

Brilbeck said it’s going to take a while to get everyone trained. 

“It’s going to take a little while for us to go through all of the schools. Obviously, our deputies have other duties they have to perform, but the schools have been extremely gracious and getting us in and giving us tours and showing us areas of the schools that otherwise we wouldn’t know about,” said Brilbeck. 

Aside from having the entire Sheriff’s Office tour every school within the county, another goal the Sheriff has for his office is training everyone on crisis intervention training.  

They expect to have the majority of deputies and officers trained on that within the next year.