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Training teaches: Try to escape
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · August 22, 2014
When the “active shooter” in a cap, sunglasses and camouflage yanked on the West Branch High School’s southeast gymnasium door only to find it locked, he then gained access by the southwest door, entered and began “firing” — throwing foam golf balls — at teachers while they hid underneath tables.
One threw her keys at him, and he changed direction, going for someone else.
Yet in the end, he got every one.
In the second scenario, the “shooter” yanked on the same door the first time while Superintendent Kevin Hatfield mimicked an alert that a shooter was in the building.
This time, the teachers ran for three different exits, with one batch heading toward the east hallway.
However, the shooter appeared in the east hallway this time, so a stream of teachers hustled their way back into the gymnasium and out a second doorway.
A couple of them took a foam golf ball to the back, but the rest got away.
That, Hatfield said later, is an example of the difference between hiding in classrooms and fleeing for safety.
West Branch Police Chief Mike Horihan, who pretended to be a shooter, said that although all the teachers were struck by “gunfire” in the first scenario, he commended those who threw items or blocked themselves in with chairs.
“It disrupts the shooter,” he said. “Something is better than nothing.”
Horihan said he attended a training where another police officer pretended to be a shooter. There, the officer used an Airsoft gun to fire at the “victims.” Yet despite the officer’s training, he was unable to strike any of the victims as they fled a classroom not far away from him.
Hatfield told of watching re-enactments and even some short clips of actual school shootings and said that shooters missed a surprisingly high number of moving targets.
“They need sitting targets to hit them,” he said.
The superintendent said it is “unfortunate” school districts must even discuss the possibility of active shooters, but “you can’t go a week without hearing about it in the news.”
“This is more instinctually basic,” he said of running from danger.
He noted that West Branch Schools have changed many of their locks, required identification badges of staff and mandated visitors to all sign in at each school office in an effort to increase security.
“Everybody needs to do their job,” he said, making sure anyone not wearing proper ID is nicely asked to return to the office and sign in.
Horihan said the more teachers can do to get children to safety in the first four to six minutes — before police arrive — the more likely they can keep people alive.
“By the time law enforcement hits the door, it’s already over,” he said of most active shootings.
Horihan encouraged teachers to take a few minutes to familiarize themselves with what they have in their classrooms that could be used to either block or barricade a doorway — if there is no immediate escape — or throw at a shooter to disrupt them in any way possible.
“In a lot of these cases, the teachers get it first, so it’s not good news for you guys,” he said to some uneasy chuckles from the crowd.
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