ALERRT Center receives $8.6 million grant from justice department

The U.S. Department of Justice has awarded Texas State University’s Advance Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center a multi-million dollar grant. 

The ALERRT Center has received an $8.7 million grant from the DOJ’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Preparing for Active Shooter Situations (PASS) program, Texas State announced Tuesday afternoon. 

The grant will help ALERRT’s Integrated Response Training Program, which provides training throughout the U.S. to improve rapid response to active shooter events 

"This grant will allow us to prepare law enforcement, fire and EMS personnel across the country to respond to active shooter events through integrated training," Executive Director of the ALERRT Center Pete Blair said in a statement.

The DOJ’s PASS program is arranged to expand public safety by providing funds for scenario-based training that prepares officers and first responders to safely and effectively handle active shooter and violent threats, Texas State said in a press release. 

PASS projects provide training to meet the goal of the 2016 Protecting Our Lives by Initiating COPS Expansion Act, which offers "scenario-based, integrated response courses designed to counter active shooter threats or acts of terrorism against individuals or facilities."

ALERRT received an $8.6 and a $5.4 million grant through the POLICE Act in 2018 and 2017, respectively.