Back to School
Recently I was asked to attend a three-day course entitled “School Shootings: Prevention, Response and Mitigation,” as a member of the fire service advisory committee at the local career development institute. Taught by both a retired police chief and several retired federal agents, the course gave the history, motivation and analysis of multiple-victim shootings at schools throughout North America, with special emphasis on the Columbine High School and Virginia Tech attacks.
Of the 35 attendees, only four were from the fire service. At first we had to overcome the learning curve regarding current police tactics in dealing with these shootings. Equally difficult to comprehend was the Internet subculture that instructs, openly discusses and borderline promotes school shootings as a way for a student to get “even” while forever making his or her name “infamous.”
As the course continued, it became obvious that the sooner responders started medical triage and treatment, the greater chance there was for victims to survive. The class discussion at times centered on how we first responders could better prepare and work comfortably in an ongoing environment that may be “contained” but not yet fully “secured.” For example, three volunteer EMTs at Virginia Tech (college students, not SWAT members) agreed to go into the stairwells with the SWAT team to triage and treat victims who were brought to them in a controlled setting while SWAT teams continued to sweep the area. No other victims died after EMTs entered the building.
After the course, we started a dialogue in our area on how to best respond and mitigate such carnage. This blog is as much an attempt to obtain input from those of you who have had similar discussions with your law enforcement counterparts as it is to raise your awareness that most of us are ill-prepared both procedurally and emotionally to handle this type of emergency.
I am not looking for every EMT or medic to be an armed SWAT member, but do some of you issue tactical vests and allow medics discretion to enter just after SWAT has swept an area? Is that somehow captured in your SOGs?
Are you prepared to handle a school shooting, knowing that on average that there is a victim every five seconds a shooter is in the building, and that those victims may be friends, neighbors or children of the responders?
If you haven’t squirmed in your chair by now, then know that I did for nearly the entire three-day class. But I also came out of those sessions knowing we must have this discussion to be better prepared to respond to the unthinkable in our area.
December 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Chief Reilag,
What a great idea. As one of your instructors for this course I continue to see a critcial “gap of understanding” between police, fire, educators and other responders. Often its just a lack of knowledge about our specfic response protocols and comprehending what we can and can’t do. In any event, having an “active shooter or shooters” engaged in killing and wounding people at their workplace, public locations and schools has become far to frequent. Its important that we rethink how we respond to such tragedies. Perhaps mutual resonse would be better served as a unified response. This dialogue is an opportunity for all of us to share our views on what works best before the alarm sounds. Ken Hughes, Retired Police Chief and Program Manager for the Prevention, Response and Mitigation of School Shootings.
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