from Savannah Morning News

Savannah State University must improve its emergency response plan following last Friday’s on-campus shooting.

The emergency 911 call recordings involving last Friday’s shooting of a student on Savannah State University campus reveal the lack of an effective protocol to protect the institution and the surrounding community.

That’s dangerous. The university and area police can and must do a better job in responding quickly and effectively to such emergencies.

Fortunately, the student who was shot is recovering from his gunshot wounds. The alleged gunman is in custody. Indeed, police caught a break. It might have been a different story had the suspect fled the eastside campus on foot after pulling the trigger.

The poor response cries for major changes in how SSU responds to emergencies. Area police officials should look at 911 protocol so that metro police is better informed.

The SSU campus is too large for campus police to search effectively. Their first line of back-up is to call in Thunderbolt police. That’s insufficient and cries for immediate change. With as few as a single officer on duty, there’s only so much Thunderbolt can do.

According to the order in which SSU called for help, the next fallback is the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. However, GBI agents are few in number and are scattered around the region.

SSU President Earl Yarbrough is making great strides in improving this historic institution. But his university’s emergency action plan is flawed. Fixing it must be a priority.

Meanwhile, local 911 protocol must reflect the serious nature posed by a man with a gun who has shot someone on a college campus. Apparently, it doesn’t.

In the wake the Virginia Tech massacre that killed 32 people in April of last year, SSU should have been swarming with officers within minutes after the shooting was reported, not an hour.

The Savannah-Chatham metro police should have been immediately notified. It’s the only force with enough officers, a SWAT team and police dogs that can respond in a timely manner.

While the university apparently does have a voluntary text messaging system to inform students and faculty of such an emergency, many students said they were unaware of the program. Perhaps SSU should make the system mandatory.

The 911 tape is revealing and troubling. Note that while the original 911 call came in at 11:42 a.m., Thunderbolt’s request for aid was not put to metro officers until 12:21 p.m. – to which metro responded that SSU must formally ask for help before metro officers can go on campus.

The call for all available units from metro’s Islands Precinct did not go out until nearly an hour after the original 911 call, around 12:41 p.m. That’s appalling. Even on foot, the shooter could have been miles away by the time sufficient officers were on the scene.

Besides a better plan to communicate with off-campus police agencies, the SSU police department also apparently needs to work on inter-office communication.

Claud Flythe, SSU’s vice president of administration, touted the fact that within 15 minutes of the shooting, four witnesses had come forward to identify Devon McIntosh as the suspect.

But more than an hour later, when the administrator of a neighboring private school with 540 children called campus police for information, there were no details shared about the suspect or his description. That’s unacceptable.

The alleged gunman was found by a Savannah-Chatham police dog at 4:45 p.m., hiding in the trunk of his car. The canine unit was working with campus police and acting on tips by student witnesses.

The witnesses and officers are to be commended for working together. However, this shooting should serve as an object lesson for what to do and what not to do – and what must be done to better protect the community in the future.

Related: Savannah State shooting suspect in court

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