Expert: Alarm pull may have hindered police
He says school should have followed standard lockdown procedures.
Reports that a student or faculty member pulled a fire alarm to warn people about the shooter at Santa Fe High School drew a quick response Friday from a national school security expert.
It would have been better if the school had followed standard lockdown procedures, said Ken Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services.
“I’m not placing blame,” he said. “We have to increase training for school officials, security officers and students to focus on lockdown instead of running everywhere.”
While well intended, pulling the fire alarm puts more people in danger, he said. “The purpose of lockdowns is to keep teachers and students out of harm’s way.”
Sending students running out of the building also “delays the police response,” he said, because officers have been trained to go in and neutralize the shooter, but they’re slowed down by masses coming toward them.
Schools need to examine what kind of equipment they have to ensure that lockdowns can be called from other places than just the office, or they have the ability to get in touch with the office immediately to have the lockdown called from there, he said.
The fact that explosives were found on the campus by police is an indication that the attack on the school had been planned for some time, Trump said, which points to another key preventative measure.
Many schools need to do more to develop threat assessments based on information they receive about students, he said. “Typically somebody, somewhere will have seen red flags.”
Sarah Turowski, a school resource officer in Georgetown who is president of the Texas Association of School Resource Officers, said potential Texas school shootings and suicides have been thwarted through computer software programs that allow students to send anonymous tips, and software that scans student emails for keywords such as “shoot” and “gun.”