Last month, Shawano police held a lockdown drill at Shawano Middle School.
It was an in-service day and only staff were involved, a handful of whom were selected to play students locked down in a classroom.
The scenario was one that has become all too familiar, echoing the real-life tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut less than a year ago. A lone gunman shoots his way into the school and makes his way to the classroom.
Police Capt. Jeff Heffernon said such incidents are still statistically rare, but becoming less so.
“It’s unfortunate, but it’s becoming less and less of a statistical anomaly,” he said.
Ever since the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, police have been training for the possibility that such a thing could happen even here in Shawano.
Preventing such incidents would almost seem to be a moot point. Instead, the focus has turned to surviving them.
“Survivability is our goal,” Heffernon said.
Police tactics in responding to shooter situations has continuously evolved since Columbine, Heffernon said, and the response from school districts, workplaces and other areas where mass shootings could occur needs to change as well.
“It does not just apply to the school buildings,” Heffernon said. “It could apply to any area that would be susceptible to an active shooter: factories, office complexes, hospitals, all of those things.”
But it’s the schools where police are starting first in their drive to change the response to a shooter situation.
Heffernon will go before the Shawano School Board on Monday to talk about ALICE — an “options-based strategy” that espouses key components of Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.
“The best practice for school districts should be an options-based approach,” Heffernon said, explaining that ALICE offers “proactive strategies that increase chances for survival during a violent intruder event.”
The plan under such circumstances is a lockdown, which has students and their teachers huddling in the safe area of a locked classroom until the all-clear is given.
“This needs to change,” Heffernon said. “This needs to change yesterday.”
The ALICE model encourages a number of strategy changes to the lockdown policy, beginning with the initial alert itself, which, Heffernon said, tells staff only that they need to go into lockdown without giving them the information they need to react.
“Whatever information you can put out then and there, that’s what needs to be put out,” he said, such as, “There’s a man with a gun in the school office.”
After that, it would be up to staff to determine the best option.
“Staff would be tasked with making a judgement given the information they have,” Heffernon said. “In other words, we’re asking our staff to think.”
Heffernon said the lockdown policy is to fight the urge to run, keep calm and out of sight.
“We encourage evacuation,” he said, though it’s not the only option.
Lockdown is still an option, but with the added initiative of barricading the door if there’s no way out.
At least one part of the ALICE model — the Counter option — is controversial, Heffernon conceded. That would include anything from distracting the shooter by throwing things at him to swarming over him and taking him down.
“It’s a big break from the passive lockdown,” Heffernon said.
That option is more geared toward middle and high school students, of course. Evacuation would be the top priority at the intermediate and primary grades.
But even that requires a greater emphasis on information being shared.
“It’s critical to know where the shooter is at,” Heffernon said.
Heffernon said the Oct. 24 drill at the middle school would have resulted in “100 percent survivability” had the ALICE model been in place, mainly because the staff and students in the classroom could have evacuated.
“There were ways out of that classroom,”he said. “There were alternative ways out.”
Heffernon said the department’s goal is not to raise fears.
“We don’t want to raise alarm or fear any higher than it already is across our country based on active shooters,” he said, “but certainly the city of Shawano and Shawano Police Department is aware of what’s going on.”
A number of solutions to the problem have been offered nationally, including arming school teachers and staff.
“The amount of training that goes into carrying a gun and the responsibility that’s associated with that, I’m not sure if the academic world is ready for that,” Heffernon said. “And I’m not sure there is financial support to do that.”
Heffernon and two other Shawano police officers are certified ALICE trainers and can provide training not only to the schools, but to other entities that request it.
“All they have to do is contact us,” he said.
Categories
