Law enforcement from the Miami Valley and Wayne County on Wednesday trained with a first responder from the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012.
Lt. J. Paul Vance, Connecticut State Police, shared his experiences with fellow law enforcers and local educators meeting at National Trail High School in Preble County.
"It's something that broke everyone's heart all across the country and is something that to this day, many of us have to deal with," said Vance. "Our goal in law enforcement is to take a tragedy, learn from it and do better if it should occur again."
The training included exercises with K-9s and SWAT teams from the Miami Valley and Wayne County, Ind., responding to simulated school violence situations.
Finally, communication equipment allowed multiple police agencies that usually communicate on different radio channels to merge their equipment and talk on one channel.
The technology can be life saving.
Preble County sheriff's Capt. Dean Miller said, "When we do get an incident like this, we bring this many units together, we've got to be able to patch everybody's radios, so we can be on the same page and hear what's going on."