 The Ventura County Sheriff says a gunman opened fire inside as it was crowded with more than 100 people. It is an all too familiar scene, shots fired in a public building. History has shown us it can happen anywhere, anytime. Meaning first responders have to be ready at all times. Welcome to Camp San Luis Obispo, just off Highway 1. It is not only the original home of the California National Guard. It is also home to the California Specialized Training Institute, or CSTI. The California Specialized Training Institute, or CSTI as we call it, is our training arm of the Office of Emergency Services. CSTI has a wide range of courses and offers some of the most versatile and comprehensive facilities in the country. Among their most sought after courses, active shooter drills, part of their officer safety and field tactics class. Part of that is training law enforcement throughout the state and everything from active shooter to how do you manage a crisis situation that's evolving. The average class runs from 30 to 40 students and they aren't throughout the entire state of California. Alex Cabasa is the CSTI superintendent. When these guys show up on Camp San Luis Obispo to train, we got them for 40 to 60 hours. They don't have to go back to their home stations to their jobs, respond to any calls. So we got a captive audience so we're running them for those 40 to 60 hours. This is a positive environment to get a lot of really excellent high quality training done. The training here is intense. Split second decisions can be a matter of life. It's your life or somebody else's life. Or death. Having an officer who's new, who's a firefighter who doesn't shoot an AR-15 very often or a long gun, they understand just how easy it is to hit something that far away and accurately. So, you know, if you have an active shooter and you're shooting across a school campus, can you do it accurately? You know, standing there, can you do it kneeling, can you do it prone? Do you have your license and registration? The training covers everything from routine traffic stops to darkened warehouses to responding to shots fired on a campus set. We have the availability to turn our facility into a school, a warehouse, an office building, any place where active shooters typically take place. There's a different type of active shooter drill taking place here. We're on the USC campus in Los Angeles. This is Tommy's place. It's a popular student hangout. Thursday night, the place is packed. Except tonight, all of these people have volunteered to take place in this exercise. They are all aware that within a few minutes, an active shooter is coming in. There's nothing more important than the safety of our students here at USC. So, we spend literally a year preparing for this exercise. Today's scenario, we were recreating something very similar to what happened in Ventura with the country, the nightclub. What we did is we had a theater and we had loud music. We had lights. We had smoke. And that was to create sensory overload for the officers and responders coming in. As we've learned in law enforcement and all cops know this, when something happens and you're under stress, you're going to do what you train to do. Everything about this drill is as realistic as possible. Hundreds of cameras across the USC campus are being monitored. A mobile command center is quickly set up in a nearby parking lot. Multiple agencies throughout L.A. County work together to respond. And special makeup called Mulage mimics gunshot wounds. I was a gunshot victim. I had three shots around the ankle so I couldn't walk or move. At day job, Micah Winder is an occupational therapy professor at USC. For this drill, tonight, she went all in. Volunteering to play the role of a shooting victim. I think everyone did a great job participating. And I feel more confident if something like this were to happen. I forbid that we would be more prepared. Back on the CSTI campus at Camp San Luis Obispo. Officers go through a friend or foe drill. More split-second decisions. More training for the day they hope will never come. We are just normal human beings like everybody else that are put into these situations that are split-second decisions. There's no forethought of malice. We're going in to protect ourselves and primarily the public that we represent. The use of force is really a last option and a limited option that we have. If you'd like more information on the California Specialized Training Institute, visit the CSTI page on our website caloes.ca.gov. For all of us at Cal OES, I'm Brian May.