Fort Worth police train for mass shootings

Zero tolerance officers dressed in 78 pounds of tactical gear broke through a door with a ram Thursday afternoon and began searching for gunmen in what they call “an active shooter scenario.”

“Police! Down! Police! Down! Police! Down!” they shouted.

Members of the media were invited to watch the officers train at the department’s 30,000-square-foot simulated village at the Bob Bolen Public Safety Complex in south Fort Worth.

Officer Jed Miller said training in the village helps officers speed up their response times and prepare for situations like the one in San Bernardino, Calif., Wednesday morning.

“The actions of evil people continue to change, and as we see their actions we respond [by changing] our tactics,” Miller said. “We change them to address what we have been seeing, and we try to stay in front of it.”

The Fort Worth zero tolerance unit is made up of 60 officers divided into six teams. The teams rotate, so that the city is covered 24 hours a day. The unit assists SWAT, and other local, county and state agencies. —Monica S. Nagy

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 7:35 PM with the headline "Fort Worth police train for mass shootings."