Originally posted by LoneGunMan
When the adreniline is pumping you and I both know its pure training that gets us through. The other portion that makes the scene not fall apart are
the Capt., chiefs, and leit. that are detached from the assault (whether structure fire my side of the fence, or a hostage situation the police side)
and doesnt have the mind killing adreneline pumping.
Those citizens will panic no matter what. I dont think it is the police itself that is the problem, it is what is being handed down to them in a
steaming pile of you no what, that they have to respond too. The special assault cop didnt decide to raid that school. The ones that did make that
desicion though, I think have an agenda.
[edit on 30-10-2006 by LoneGunMan]
No I don't think training the students once a year makes sense ... the fiscal commitment alone seems kind of steep. It seems like it was a well
intentioned but badly thought out idea by school and police administration. Had the parents been kept in the loop perhaps there would've been enough
outlash ahead of time to stop the event.
As far as the police and training taking over while adrenaline is pumping and all that. Yes it's true in any life threatening event (for police/fire
or any citizen) adrenaline will set in ... most people use it to run away .. some people have to focus it and use it to respond. I wasn't really
thinking of the benefit of this event for the police officers ... other than just another training excercise getting used to school layouts, multiple
classrooms and controlling chaos.
What I was thinking (but not neccessarily agreeing with) was the student and staff benefit. School lockdowns are pretty much standard during any time
of potentially violatile situation. In the fairly small city I live in (approx 50-60k) we have had 3-4 in the last year. None of these were for the
dreaded "active shooter" scenario or thankfully for any hostage/barricade situation.
But nowadays any type of mobile threat is treated differently ... say a suspect with a knife takes off running from an officer, if they're within a
certain distance of a school there's a good chance that school will get told to go into lockdown. Normally these end with another phone call saying
all is well and the lockdown can be ended.
One of the local situations here was a threat, albeit a bogus threat, from a 13yr old with a stolen cellphone ... he called 911 several times and said
he had a gun and was going to shootup XX School today. Wonderful technology ... not knowing where he was calling from the school was put into
lockdown.
The response from the local police was pretty much duplicate of what the article states. The school was locked down ... some students and teachers
remembered to barricade their rooms, some did not. The campus was surrounded and a couple SWAT style teams swept the open areas of the school to
ensure no one was wandering around. Each classroom was emptied and the students were patted down (in case the threat was real and the suspect had
changed his mind or was waiting) and the kids were lead out from the school one class room at a time.
Obviously parents/teachers/students were pretty scared and some people were upset and thought this could've been handled differently. In my opinion
this was the perfect response, every threat has to be treated as real until you can be sure it is not. In the end the suspect was caught with the
stolen phone still in his possession ... not sure how much he got as a juvenile with no record, probably probation.
I'm just playing devils advocate here and saying had the children been aware of the procedures that take place during these type of situations they
might've been a little more at ease during those couple hours ... since they would know what would be happening next.
Does that alone justify the training? Maybe ... maybe not.
That is why the parental notification is critical. I see some problems with the
implementation and possibly the idea in general. I see the argument that this is a school and schools are for education and why are we wasting our
childrens time with this. But here in Califronia we do fire drill evacuations (few times a year) and they used to do earthquake drillls ... sadly they
have started doing lockdown drills where the kids barricade their room and shelter in place. So does this fit into line with those sort of preventive
training drills? Would you pull a kid out of school so they didn't have to deal with a fire drill?
I just dont see what some others are saying is a conspiracy to strip away peoples rights and to create a military state. We all (me, you, the police,
the government, etc) want our kids to be safe ... unfortunately dangerous events at schools is part of a real threat ... each school and parent needs
to decide what is the correct for their local community.
