School massacre exercise teaches real lessons

By Greg Kowalski, HometownLife.com

Two gunmen burst into a classroom at Andover High School shortly after 9:30 a.m. Thursday and shot several students before they were brought down by a rain of bullets fired by Bloomfield Township police.

But it could have been worse. Much, much worse.

It could have been real.

Instead, what staff, students, public safety officers and members of the community witnessed was not a crime in progress but a lesson on what could happen if someone with a gun went on a rampage in the school. And on how to protect the students.

“When I went to school here, the idea of a school shooting was so far removed,” said police officer Pete Matejcik. Matejcik is a 1983 graduate of Andover. And in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings and shootings at a host of other schools — some in wealthy neighborhoods like Bloomfield Township — the potential for a massacre is all too real.

In response, the Bloomfield Hills School District teamed up with the Avondale School District to apply for $243,971 grant from the Department of Education Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools to prepare for such an emergency.

Three scenarios were conducted. In the first, two armed men burst into the cafeteria and lined students up against a wall, shooting some (using, blanks, of course).

“I came with a purpose,” shouted one of the gunman, who then shot a student giving the exercise a chilling air of realism. In the second scenario, a student convinced a teacher to open his locked classroom door, then pulled a gun, again shooting students.

In both those sessions, police officers ended the incidents by rushing into the rooms with guns blazing. The sounds of gun shots and smell of gunpowder filled the air as students screamed and cried.

In the final presentation, six students lay on the floor outside the cafeteria, all bleeding and three dead. Officers quickly determined which could be saved and set up a triage area to treat and transport the students.

“You can hear gunshots in the movies, but when it’s next to you it’s different, said Chandler Billes, one of the student victims.

“We were prepared, but we were nervous,” said Rachel Pad, another student victim. “We didn’t know how to respond. But it was fun.”

The practice was a learning experience for staffers. Matejcik explained that after the Columbine shooting, police changed their tactics to deal with a school shooting. At Columbine time and lives were wasted while police set up a perimeter and called in a hostage negotiator.

Now the police come inside immediately with the goal of stopping the gunman — even if that means shooting multiple times.

And teachers are instructed to not open a door once it has been locked even if a student on the outside pleads to come in. For that student, as was shown in the exercise, may be carrying a gun.

Each of the exercises were watched by staff standing alongside the walls or looking in through the windows. That did not lessen the affect of the screams and shots.