Miami-Dade’s community relations board comes together to discuss county’s unique mass casualties response plan

MIAMI – Miami-Dade County Community Relations board met Wednesday with the Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Committee, and one topic that caught attention was their active shooter training.  

The public had a question for the officers: If something tragic like Uvalde were to happen in Miami-Dade what would that look like for law enforcement? They were stern with their response, saying they would go in and stop the shooter, not wait.

“We know something’s happening in there, there’s an active shooter were going in. There is no hesitation,” said Maj. Carlos Gonzalez, who is also the director of the Miami-Dade Public Safety Training Institute. 

Gonzalez confirmed they will go right in to stop an active shooter in your child’s school. 

The director of the Miami-Dade Police Department echoed that.  

“But know, that God forbid a situation were to happen Miami-Dade, police and our local municipal partners will be ready and will act and will move forward to stop the killing and stop the dying,” said Freddy Ramirez.

This training, under their PRT or priority response team, the experts in their mass casualty approach, is not a new program, Gonzalez says. 

“Every other week we bring in officers from around the county. It’s not the same group of officers every time and they train. They train in regards to tactics how to approach, what our purposes are what expectations we have of them and our motto and purpose of training is stop the killing stop the dying,” said Gonzalez.  

Ramirez says they have been working on this response since the tragedy in Parkland.   

Since they started, their training has remained the same. Ramirez says there’s a big part of community help when it comes to preventing mass shootings from happening.  

“Collaboration with our community partners, our parents, that if they see something suspicious activity, in tweets, pictures, whatever it is to report it so we can get to it before it ends up a situation like that,” said Ramirez.  

Officers train bi-weekly, so if there were to be an active shooter incident, they will be prepared the second the call comes in.  

“There is not call for any other type of situation we will not handle it like a barricaded subject or hostage situation it’s active shooter. So, we enter, we go through we go over the tactics. We also provide that training to everyone that goes through our academy so the moment they’re out they’re ready to go,” said Gonzalez.  

This PRT mission is not just for public schools. This includes private and charter schools as well as shopping malls, places of worship and hospitals.