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Indiana State Department of Health holds active shooter exercise

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The Indiana State Department of Health is preparing its employees to respond in case of a specific type of emergency.

The department held an active shooter exercise Wednesday morning.

During the hour long exercise, someone fired blanks inside the building and while some employees sheltered on designated ares, others exited the building.

Officials said the exercise not only helps the DOH staff practice appropriate responses in an active shooter situation, but it also helps specializes teams to have a closer to reality training as well.

“When we are dealing with a building with nobody in it, it’s usually the bad guy and the police officers. So now, when you have 600 employees everybody is a bad guy but you can’t put handcuffs on everybody. So when we dlal with people, we need to figure out very quickly this someone we need to deal with, is it somebody we need to tell go hide so we can find the bad guy?” Master Trooper for Indiana State Police Central Swat, Brian Thomas said.

The Indiana State Police emergency response team and capitol police helped coordinate the drill Wednesday.