Law enforcementAlabama wants to teach you how to deal with active-shooter situations

The Alabama Department of Homeland Security (ADHS) has paid for a series of billboards, informing the public there is a video on how to deal with an active shooter situation in a work place or other public settings.

ADHS wanted to get the word out about the video they have helped produce, and have spent $50,000 on the billboards, using federal grant money. The billboards show people in suits running for their lives as well as a link to the video.

“It’s not just schools. It’s work places, it’s government buildings, and it’s becoming a too well-known story,” ADHS Spokesperson Leah Garner told FOX10.

According to Garner, officials started working on the video late last year, but after the shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, Governor Robert Bailey wanted the video released quickly.

“The governor reached out to us and said, ‘What do we need to do? What do we need to get out to everybody?’ And we said, ‘well, we’ve actually been working on a lot of this already.’ And he said get it out there,” Garner told FOX10.

The video was mostly produced by the city of Houston, Texas, and ADHS paid $2,000 to add clips and other elements of Alabama.

ADHS’s Web site says if you are in an active shooter situation, you should trust your instincts and do everything you can to protect yourelf and make it out alive. The Web site also says there are usually three options in these situations:

• Run: Can you safely escape?
• Hide: Is there a good place to hide and stay quiet?
• Fight: Can you take down the shooter?

The video has drawn mixed reactions, with some people say the grant money could have been used to hire more police or used to bring in more advanced law enforcement tactics. The department says, however, that it wants to create a debate in order to make sure people go to the Web site and watch the video.

“Our hope as a department is that you will spark interest in the message of the billboard and it will lead you to the website that will allow you to read and see the video and understand it fully and take it to heart,” Garner told FOX10.