HUTTO – Police Chief Jeffrey Yarbrough wants to know what Hutto citizens will do in an emergency situation. More importantly, he wants the citizens to know what they should do and be aware of what police and first responders will do.
The Community SAFE (Strategic Actions For Everyone) Project was designed to meet that need. Spearheaded by Yarbrough and launched Sept 13 as part of the city’s Emergency Preparedness Month, the initiative may be the first in the U.S. to fully integrate citizen response training with law enforcement and fire and rescue training.
“The safety plans are made oneon- one with each business, church or daycare and we’ll share those with our law enforcement partners. When we do our drills, we’ll be working with our constable, the sheriff and deputies in the area so if something happens it won’t be the first time they’ve been in those facilities. It will increase the competence and confidence of everyone involved,” Yarbrough said. Through the SAFE Project, Hutto-area businesses, daycares and churches can receive free emergency preparedness training from the Hutto Police Department. Working with Williamson County ESD #3, Hutto PD will help design or evaluate existing safety plans, assist with safety drills and help establish standard response protocols for the organization regarding what to do in case of severe weather, fires, active shooters and other emergency situations.
The drills will also be part of Hutto PD training and help familiarize officers with local business and building layouts. The initiative was sparked in part by the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, according to Yarbrough.
“Schools are being proactive and taking necessary steps for school safely. We’re involved in that. But are we leaving any places vulnerable? There are a lot of places vulnerable. Do we have an opportunity to go into those areas and help them? Yes, we have the opportunities,” he said.
The police chief expressed concern that increased school safety makes schools harder targets, which may cause places such as churches and businesses to be seen as easier or “soft” targets. “Our goal is to identify places that may be considered soft targets and do everything we can to make sure they have strategic action plans, they have safety response plans, in the event of any critical incident and not just an active shooter event. That way we have somewhat of a standardized response throughout the community and we’ll know exactly what they’re doing there, and they’ll know exactly what our response is, so you have this seamless integration of safety and security responses.”
Professional Standards Sergeant Josh Bellenir is a trainer for the Hutto PD CRASE (Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events) course, which will also be offered as part of the Community SAFE Project. He says Hutto PD may be the first in the country to implement such an all-inclusive safety program.
“This is the first attempt, that I’m aware of, that any municipality has made to integrate the first responder and law enforcement response along with civilian response and make it one community program.”
Bellenir shares Yarbrough’s excitement for this project’s potential to impact Hutto as a whole. “We want to incorporate every single person in our city that wants to be a part of this. Everyone will have the opportunity to at least view it and have the discussion with us. The community can become more educated, and it will allow them a little more peace of mind so when they lay their heads down at night they know we got it covered’’ he said. “Not ‘we’ as in the police department, ‘we’ as in the city of Hutto.
Everybody from the citizens all the way up to the city manager. We got it covered.”
To sign up for this program or learn more, contact Lt. Dwain Jones at dwain.jones@huttotx. gov or call (512) 759-5978.
