Posted on 08/07/2013 6:03:28 PM PDT by digger48
From down the hallway, it sounded like a locker door slamming. But the noise was something far more menacing.
The sound was a gunshot. A man wearing a red hoodie and dark sunglasses walked down the hallways of Northwestern High School, trying door handles. He found one door open and fired a bullet into the classroom.
The deafening blast ricocheted through the building.
A teacher came out to see what was happening. The man shot him in the chest, and the teacher crumpled to the ground.
“It’s been a minute since that man first fired that gun,” yelled Indiana State Police Sgt. Tony Slocum to the crowd of onlookers lining the hallway where the shooter had just walked through. “The police haven’t arrived yet. People are dying. What are you doing?”
That was the question Indiana State Police asked educators and administrators from Howard and Cass counties Tuesday morning after police acted out an active shooter scenario at the school to re-create the terror and chaos that occurs during an actual shooting situation.
State police, along with the Indiana Department of Education, spent months planning the training, which they offer to any school district in the state.
Eleven districts so far have asked for the training scenario, and more are signing up as students all over the state head back to school.
Slocum said the goal of the training is to provide school administrators with ways to respond to a shooter situation and to provide information on the kind response they can expect from law enforcement.
It also serves as a starting point for schools to brainstorm ideas and practices that keep students and communities safe, he said.
“I hope for the best, but that’s not the world I live in,” Slocum told school officials Tuesday. “The world I live in, you need to have a plan, and the time to make that plan isn’t when someone is shooting at you.”
Shortly after the hooded man shot the teacher in the mock scenario, four officers arrived on scene, checking classrooms until they located the shooter around a corner inside a room. They apprehended the man, and escorted him out of the building in handcuffs.
The whole scene wrapped up in about five minutes, but Slocum said during a real shooting event, what teachers and students decide to do in those brief minutes means the difference between life and death.
“Five minutes is a long time if someone is shooting in your school. A long time,” he said. “It seems like an eternity.”
Rick Hogue, an ISP school safety liaison, said in the past, schools held a “lockdown” mentality during shooting events. Teachers were told to just hunker down in a classroom and wait for police to arrive.
But that isn’t the case anymore, he said, as law enforcement has become more savvy on dealing with actual shooting situations.
“This drill today is unique and it changes the paradigm. It changes the mindset,” he said. “It provides educators with options on what they can do from the time the event starts to the time law enforcement arrives.”
It boils down to three choices for school officials and students, he said — run, hide or fight.
Which option teachers and staff decide to take depends on the nature of the situation, Hogue said, but teachers shouldn’t feel limited to just staying put in the classroom.
Slocum said the real point, however, is to have a plan in place, so school officials have some kind of protocol to follow.
How do they develop that plan?
“What we’re asking you to do is something we don’t want you to do,” he said. “But you need to start thinking like these creeps and cretins and cowards who kill our kids … criminals and sick people, they’re not dumb. They have plans.”
When would a person dead-set on killing start shooting, for example? During lunch, when there’s a big crowd? Who would the shooter kill? Would it be random, or would it be the person running the intercom who could notify the school about what’s happening?
Slocum encouraged teachers and staff to ask those questions, and develop a game plan based on the answers.
Schools can also be proactive in identifying students or other people who might potentially cause harm or become violent.
Slocum told teachers there are tell-tale signs that students might become dangerous, like an increase in unexplained absences, a decrease in attention to appearance, mood swings, or the development of an everyone-is-against-me mentality.
“It’s a corny saying, but it really hits the point — if you see something, say something,” he said. “If you get that feeling that something might be wrong, act on it.”
Northwestern Middle School Principal Brett Davis said most teachers and staff in his school district have already taken online training on dealing with active shooters, but Tuesday’s scenario made that training more real.
“When you see it happening visually, it really hits home,” he said.
And for Slocum, the training has a personal undertone. With kids of his own, he said he wants to make sure school administrators know how to keep them safe, along with every other student in a school.
“It hit me recently how much I trust you guys to keep my kids safe,” he said to the teachers. “Nobody wakes up and expects a shooting to happen. Nobody expects their school to be shot up … We’re not telling you that you have to do this or that during a shooting, but just to think about what you can do, and what you would do.”
I remember when the ISP used un-marked Camaros (with Michigan Plates no less) to patrol 465 around town. Never pass up a revenue opportunity.
they also now have unmarked Camaros, Chargers, Mustangs, Explorers, Tahoes, and a bunch of others.
The problem with building schools like castles is that once the shooter is inside, the castle is then used against the police and it becomes a prison of children waiting to be shot.
only libtards will disarm law-abiding people in their precious gun-free zone criminals ignore, and then give the disarmed ‘permission’ to ‘fight’ the crazed armed gunman.
they are effing morons. it’s like disarming a woman and throwing her in a building full of rapists but telling her while they’re shoving her into the building, she can ‘fight back’.
that’s a door that will come in handy when swat gets the address wrong and tries to blow your door open.
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