RANSOMVILLE NY  November 23 2018 — Walk into the building at 3745 Ransomville Road and you will recognize it immediately as a former elementary school. There are the narrow lockers, the rooms full of low-lying desks, a small gymnasium.

But in the five years since its closure, the former W.H. Stevenson Elementary School has acquired a series of more ominous additions: a shooting range in a hallway, replicas of explosive components in one room and perhaps a dozen targets of human bodies, some marked with small holes.

These are part of the schoolhouse’s second life as an active shooter training center.

Stephen Cliffe, general manager of SafeShot Munitions, the building’s leasee, sees the building as a perfect site for training police, paramedics, teachers and others how to respond when a gunman opens fire. As every parent and student knows, some of the worst acts of mass murder in modern American history have unfolded in schools, from Columbine to Parkland.

“What better building to train in for an active shooter than a school,” said Cliffe, “where you can get the feel, understand what all the rooms are going to be like and go through the stressors of that location?”

W.H. Stevenson Elementary School hosted its final classes in June 2015, at the end of the 2014-15 school year. The Wilson Central School District school board approved its closure in 2013, after years of declining enrollment, deep cuts in state aid and discussions on merging the two schools.

After the closure, the district solicited offers from several potential leasees.

SafeShot first expressed interest in the building this spring. With school shootings like the Parkland, Florida massacre still fresh in the public conscious, the district was eager to support a center where teachers and police could train to avert or at least minimize that kind of tragedy, should it ever happen to them.

“When Mr. Cliffe and (SafeShot Munitions President) Dr. (Jon) Hykawy came in, we were having bigger and better conversations for the use of this building with law enforcement training,” District Superintendent Tim Carter said in a statement.

SafeShot signed the lease and moved in in September. (Neither Carter nor Cliffe would immediately provide the lease price, though Carter said SafeShot is paying a “fair market price.”)

In the two months since, they have been working to convert much of the school into an active-shooter training center.

They have converted a hallway into a shooting range for non-lethal ammunition, added targets to several classrooms and reconfigured the weight-room to provide more training-specific workouts. For instance, there is now more space for practicing defensive skills and dragging sandbags, which helps paramedics prepare for moving shooting victims away from danger.

They are also in the process of adding Astroturf to the gym floor, converting the library into a meeting room and one library room into an improvised explosive defusal training room.

Cliffe said they had hoped to have the training center complete two weeks ago, but are now eyeing an early December opening.

“We’ve gradually, in the last month and a half, really transitioned this building into something that will be representative of a top-tier training center,” Cliffe said.

Several specialists under one roof

The center, to be called the Niagara County Crossfire Community and Emergency Responder Training Academy, will bring together a number of specialists. SafeShot will provide the training munitions. Cliffe’s training company, called Imminent Threat Defense Systems, will provide training for educators and first responders. Serafino Personal Training and Tom Hillman’s Martial Arts will provide physical defense training, including recreational programs for the community at large.

“It’s kind of an amalgam of things coming together,” Cliffe said.

In the evenings, SafeShot will open the building up to the community for programs like weight-lifting, karate, soccer and pickle ball.

“It was an opportunity to bring in other training things,” Cliffe said. “It really becomes a focal point to make the whole community stronger.”

Though incomplete, the center has already seen use by the Niagara County SWAT team. Cliffe said they hope to have police and paramedics from throughout the region train in the center, and spare them the three-hour drive to the state Preparedness Training Center in Oriskany, NY.

“Police are mandated that they have certain things that they have to train, and they just need the facilities to do that,” Cliffe said. “To maintain a building in order to just train a couple times a year (and) meet state mandate is awfully financially burdensome to them. We’re trying to take some of that burden out and make it a viable option for them.”

All of the center’s trainers are certified with various law enforcement agencies, including the state Department of Criminal Justice Services and Department of Homeland Security, according to Cliffe. They also plan to bring in additional training specialists, such as Command Presence of Brunswick, Ga.

What’s more, the center utilizes systems of non-harmful ammunition developed by Ultimate Training Munitions and licensed by SafeShot. The rounds contain soft-tipped projectiles and casings that release propellent gases, softening the impact. Though the rounds fire like live ammunition, they cause minimal damage. Cliffe said they only break skin if the one is shot from less than 12 inches away.

Additional safety measures in the ammunition magazines prevent loading of live rounds, and clearly mark that the firearm contains the training munitions.

“If the muzzle is here, you are safe,” said Cliffe, using the length of a sheet of paper to demonstrate. “If you use any other training munition, your (safe distance) is in meters, and it’s going to leave a mark or draw blood. This stuff is significantly different.”

Cliffe created Imminent Threat Defense Systems in 2006, after an eight-year stint teaching social studies in Western New York.

Cliffe said he was inspired by the emergency training teachers were receiving at the time — “because it was atrocious.” He described the training as gathering students in a corner of the room, being quiet and hoping nobody came inside.

“It is about as bad of training as you could get. … You’ve put all (of a gunman’s) targets in one area,” Cliffe said.

“There’s a better way,” he added.

Cliffe had more than the inspiration to offer active shooter training; he also had the experience.

Before entering teaching, Cliffe had spent over a dozen years in private security. His work included researching and detailing travel routes to minimize the subject’s exposure to risk.

“I saw a need for going back to the stuff that I really knew, which was keeping people safe,” Cliffe said.

Several years ago, Cliffe came across Ultimate Training Munitions, and quickly incorporated it into his training programs. He also formed SafeShot to hold the license for the systems.

“It just changed entirely the training environment. It allows you to do things you couldn’t do before,” Cliffe said of the training munitions.

With Imminent Threat, Cliffe has trained thousands of police officers and paramedics across the country. A cork-board in the building hallway showcases dozens of patches, each of a department he has worked with, from such far-flung places as Florida and Arizona.

Cliffe has also provided training to local school districts, church parishes and businesses. He estimates he has put 2,000 teachers through his TeachSafe training program, including some from local districts, though he would not say which.

TeachSafe sessions run at about $1,200 to $1,400 per group of 30-40 teachers, and last about seven-hours apiece. The training hits on points that are likely familiar to many who work in large offices, churches or of course schools: run, hide and fight.

Cliffe declined to elaborate on the specifics of his training on the record, fearing it could be used by a potential criminal. But his demonstrations showed techniques that aim to minimize harm to children, delay a potential gunman wherever possible and position victims where they have the best chance at fighting back.

“We just teach people how to be effective in countering any attack and getting home safely,” Cliffe said.

Cliffe said Imminent Threat only does training in person, so that it’s more likely to be retained and recalled during an emergency. And they strive for realism, especially for police, so that their movements during an emergency situation are exact.

In recent years, as mass shooting after mass shooting captured national attention, many districts have made efforts to improve their emergency response training. But there is no broad, uniform training for school districts, and many security experts, including Cliffe, balk at some of the precautionary measures taken up by some districts.

Others more broadly question the efficacy of active shooter training. Famously, students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had undergone similar training, and still 14 students and three staff members died when a troubled student opened fire Feb. 14.

But Cliffe said schools should take every step possible to prepare for these nightmare scenarios. For him, like so many others, these safety measures are deeply personal.

“I’ve got two kids in school,” he said. “I want them to be safe.”

Niagara-Gazette

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