As I sit down to write this month’s column, I am saddened again by the senseless violence of another mass shooting incident at Fort Hood, Texas.

The actions of a lone gunman again defy the reasonable logic that most of us apply to our daily lives. How does one person get to a state of mind where the soul of another person means nothing?

That question and many others are heavily debated in this country every day. I will not join the debate about gun control in this column, as my opinion probably would bore you.

I will say that in my limited experience as a law-enforcement officer, we allocate far too little resources to those with mental illness. As a society, we stigmatize the mentally ill because, most of the time, we don’t understand the illness itself. We still hold the belief that mental illness somehow is caused by the person who is affected.

I’m glad we don’t apply the same logic to someone who has cancer or heart disease.

In the end, the cause that brings these people to a state of mind to kill others may never be known as it varies from case to case, and most often, these individuals are either killed by law enforcement or themselves.

So where does that leave the rest of us, and how do we best protect ourselves and our children from these senseless acts of violence?

To think that something like this could never happen here is the same reasoning most communities applied to mass-shooting incidents until they happened to them.

These events can happen anywhere: at church, in school, at a parade, in a mall, at a large sporting event or at your place of work. The randomness of where mass shootings take place make them difficult to respond to.

What we can do is be prepared, and each of us is responsible for our own level of preparation and readiness to react to a mass-shooting event. Being prepared does not mean being paranoid, and there is a clear distinction between the two.

One thing you can do to help prepare is to visit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website at www.dhs.gov/active-shooter-preparedness. There you will find many resources and training related to active shooters and private-sector response.

The Durango Police Department has a responsibility to all of you to be prepared, as well. We have been training for an active gunman response since well before the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Littleton. That incident sparked change nationwide in the law-enforcement community as to how we respond to mass-shooting events.

The Durango Police Department adapted quickly to the change in response. Protocol for law-enforcement response continues to evolve and changes almost yearly. The department has kept up with those changes, and we regularly train our officers in active shooter protocol and response.

This year is no different for the Durango Police Department. We have partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Forest Service, La Plata County Sheriff’s Office, Colorado State Patrol, Ignacio Police Department, Bayfield Marshal’s Office, Fort Lewis College Police Department, Durango Fire Protection District, Fort Lewis College, Durango School District 9-R, San Juan Board of Cooperative Educational Services, Sexual Assault Services Organization, Mercy Regional Medical Center, La Plata County Department of Human Services and the 6th Judicial District Attorney’s Office to facilitate a communitywide training effort.

This year, all Durango police officers will get eight hours of training specific to active shooters. We also will have a tabletop exercise and two practical exercises this summer involving all of our partners.

All of us know if an event like this happens here, we will all need to respond to assist. We have to depend on one another and train together so we can be there when needed.

I hope we never have to use any of this training here. But in the event we do, I want to be as prepared as possible. How about you?

Lt. Ray Shupe is assistant operations division commander with the Durango Police Department.