Authorities prep for school gunman scene

By Jessica Cuffman, The Marion Star

It was one of the worst scenarios law enforcement officers could imagine.

At least one shooter was loose in the halls of Harding High School, and little was known except that he had a gun and he was using it.

Four officers from different agencies arrived, and worked out a plan to eliminate the threat.

This time, it was a drill with paintballs.

Instead of bullet holes, wounded victims were marked with paint splotches. After the shooter was apprehended and disarmed, officers gave him a pat on the back and joked about hitting him in the hand with a round.

Officers from area law enforcement agencies have been taking Ohio Highway Patrol training at Harding High School the past two weeks.

Lt. Chuck Jones, commander of the patrol’s Marion post, said troopers from across the state have been working on active shooter scenarios since the Virginia Tech shootings.

Special Response Team Trooper Bob Peterson, from Marion, said instructors decided to expand this year’s training to focus on schools. Because they receive similar training, officers from different agencies can work together to stop an active shooter. They can start as soon as there are four officers on the scene, rather than waiting for all members.

“Traditionally, we’re involved with traffic safety,” Jones said of troopers. “But because of short staffing at law enforcement agencies across the state and even the country with strained budgets, troopers are being called to back up other agencies more frequently and vice versa.”

Training with other agencies helps, he said. “You never want to go in with a blind type of situation,” he said.

After an hour of classroom instruction, participants split into two groups. One practiced building searches in the upstairs of the high school, and the other learned a triangulation technique to contain wandering shooters.

Troopers took turns portraying shooters and panicked students.

Almost 30 law enforcement members from Mansfield, Carey and Bucyrus police departments, the Wyandot County Sheriff’s Office and other troopers from the patrol’s Bucyrus District participated Wednesday.

A point man, two searchers and a rear officer stayed in tight groups to cover hallways and search room to room, covering each other’s backs, ignoring injured students and advancing aggressively on shooters.

Teachers getting ready for the new school year darted into their rooms before and after scenarios to avoid the paintballs flying through the hallways.

By the end of the exercises, role players were spattered with pink and blue splotches.

The rounds, traveling at 250 feet per second, stung more than normal paintballs, officers said. Most of the projectiles were shot at close range.

Officers executed the scenarios more smoothly after each round.

Before the exercise, Peterson said it was OK to make mistakes. It was training, after all.

Tips about keeping tight, moving steadily but not too quickly, keeping fingers off the trigger when off the target — and remembering the best defense is a good offense — rattled through officers’ minds during the exercises.

One strategy that made these exercises different from others was ignoring the wounded victims and telling students and other bystanders to just get out of the building. Instead, the focus was on eliminating the threat, Peterson said. In a school shooting, he said, emergency technicians will not go into a building until it is safe to do so. Thus, the need to bypass the injured.

If the shooter leaves the building with fleeing students, that’s OK, he said.

“We’ll get him later. If he decides to fight, we have the training and experience and we’re more than willing to do that, too,” he said.

While Marion area troopers are the only officers in the county who have participated in the training, Jones said the Marion Police Department wants to complete a session for its entire department in the future.

Since the training, funded by the state, has been offered to other agencies, more than 7,500 officers in Ohio have participated, Jones said.

After taking the training, he said he felt much more confident about handling such situations.

“There’s nothing like being prepared for the worst, should it happen,” he said.