Active shooter scenario helps schools and local law enforcement

Banner Graphic/ JOYCE ORLANDO

Roachdale Town Marshal Mike Mahoy takes point as first responder during the mock scenario on Friday at North Putnam High School, as fellow officers provide back-up. The mock scenario was part of a collaboration between Indiana State Police, the Department of Education and Gov. Pence to re-establish a bond between law enforcement and school corporations. This is the first in three seminars that will be run for six counties by the state police.

ROACHDALE-- School is out, but teachers are still learning while the students are away. North Putnam High School was host to the Indiana State Police training on active shooters on Friday morning.

The training session, run by the state police in collaboration with the Department of Education and Governor Mike Pence, allowed school administration from Putnam and Clay counties and local law enforcement to come together to help prepare if an active shooter situation was ever to take place in a school.

State Police Sgt. Cory Robinson helped to lead the session with letting attendees know that they may never know who could be a potential threat to students.

"I was called one day by a detective and he asked me about a man named Steven Kazmierczak," Sgt. Robinson told the assembled crowd.

Robinson had issued him a ticket a few miles from his children's school, four months before the shooting.

Robinson went on to explain that he could not recall the individual or where he would know the man in question. The detective was later identified as an investigator in the February 2008 shooting on the Northern Illinois University campus. Kazmieczak went into a classroom, shot and killed five people and injured another 19 before taking his own life.

With this experience, helping schools become prepared for a situation like Northern Illinois or Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six staff members were killed in December 2012 by Adam Lanza, was an easy thing for Robinson to do.

School administrators and local law enforcement were introduced to the identified process and what law enforcement has learned about active shooter scenarios over the years. At North Putnam, steps had been taken by local law enforcement from Bainbridge and Roachdale to help identify and deter a perpetrator should an event take place.

"We (law enforcement) have worked with the schools to have measures put in place should a person get in," Bainbridge Town Marshall Rodney Fenwick stated.

In the high school, doors to classrooms remain locked and are held open by a magnetic strip that can be quickly removed in case of an emergency and all outside entrances are numbered to help identify the area an intruder might be.

The Unarmed Active Shooter Response training gave educators ideas on how to deal with situations that are highly stressful so that they are not incapacitated by fear.

Indiana State Trooper Jonathan Cumbie acts as the intruder of the mock scenario on Friday. The scenario was based off of Sandy Hook shooting in December of 2012. In three-minutes the intruder had injured one victim and had opened fire into several classrooms. The first responders did made it to the school in four-minutes 37 seconds.

"Take deep breaths and think with the logical part of your brain, not the emotional," Robinson told the 30 attendees.

With the mix of law enforcement and school staff in attendance, each was able to give ideas of what can be done to help give students and staff extra time in an active shooter situation.

"Some of you will never step foot in North Putnam ever again," Robinson said. "But a school is a school and everyone can still learn from it (training)."

The school staff present was able to see a how much time it could take for a intruder to get into a school and find victims. The scenario was based off of first responder's time to Sandy Hook, four minutes, 37 seconds. At the three-minute mark the intruder had hit one person and had fired shots into at least four classrooms.

School staff discussed their shock at how fast the situation took place and how long four to five minutes could be in this type of situation.

Indiana State Police will be continuing with the Unarmed Active Shooter training over the summer with four other counties in the area. This training is one of the steps that Gov. Pence, the Department of Education and ISP are working to help forge bonds between law enforcement and school corporations in the state.