Greene County DA Creates Emergency Response Team

Greene County District Attorney Dave Russo announced on Thursday that Greene County is immediately implementing an emergency response team specifically trained to give emergency response and tactical entry in the event of a school shooting within county school districts.  Russo says that in the wake of the tragedy that occurred in Uvalde, Texas and in response to the surge in school shootings, which are becoming more frequent, it is imperative for law enforcement to take appropriate actions for the protections of children and schools.  Russo says he believes the single common factor for the prevention of loss of life that has occurred in Texas, Parkland Florida, Columbine and other school shootings is response time and the availability of a trained emergency response team to immediately engage an active shooter at the incident location.  Russo says his team will be made up of county detectives, major crimes unit and local law enforcement who will be on call for immediate response to neutralize and/or de-escalate any threat of a shooting in local school districts. The selected individuals will be specifically trained in dynamic entry, threshold entry, active shooter location, and will monitor social media for prevention of any potential incidents. A hot line will also feed directly to my office of any possible issues developing in schools for the public to utilize.  Russo says they’ll be working directly with local school districts to initiate response plans in the event of an active shooter and will coordinate and develop evacuation plans for each of the schools.  Russo says funding, for now, will come out of their current budget and they will begin training immediately.