12.20.2008
Emergency Practice
I participated in this active shooter exercise Thursday. I died. The point of the activity was to train local law enforcement and EMTs on how to react to a situation like that at Virginia Tech. Due to the fact that I was in pretty bad shape, according to the card around my neck, it took a long time for the police, rubber guns in hand, to pick me up off the floor. They took care of all the less-injured people first. I was kind of surprised it took so long. I was also surprised that they felt the need to handcuff and keep an eye on the "shooter" (some mannequin), even though he shot himself in the scenario. But I guess you have to be sure.
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This is a tangent, but it's something I keep thinking about: shouldn't places (school, etc.) start coming up with drills, not just for law enforcement personnel, but for the people who are actually in the attacks? You know, like a fire or tornado drill--a crazed shooter drill. Of course, first somebody would need to figure out what behaviors increase survival odds in those situations.
ReplyDeleteMy personal theory (which is of course backed up by nothing) is that it takes people being willing to tackle the guy. (There was a shooting at a Unitarian Church in Knoxville awhile back in which the shooter only killed one person before he got taken down by members of the congregation. Weird fact: one of the tacklers was Neal's advisor at UT [the Tennesse one].) The catch with that plan is that you'd be training people to very possibly sacrifice themselves for the greater good. What do you think?
Most of the schools at which I have subbed have a protocol for that type of incident, which involves having everybody hide out of sight of anyone looking into the room through the window in the door. Most schools have teachers keep the door locked during class, and the protocol says not to open it under any circumstances if the alert is sounded. So if you are out in the hall when a shooter shows up, you are out of luck.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, though, that a shooter has to be stopped somehow. Waiting for him to run out of victims or bullets is not going to work. That's why people like me support concealed carry, although there are other ways to go about it. I thought I read somewhere that kids at some school were taught to chuck stuff like books at a shooter. That would provide "cover fire" for someone to go tackle him. Trying to tackle a shooter would potentially be fatal, but promoting a culture of courage is preferable to allowing one of fear.