After massacre, Oakland trains for the worst
The timing couldn’t have been better, or perhaps worse.
Two days after a 19-year-old man allegedly used an assault rifle to kill 17 people at a Florida high school that once expelled him, Oakland teachers, principals and other district staffers gathered in an auditorium Friday to learn what they should do if the same thing happens on their campus.
Emotions were raw, and trainer Jeffrey Solomon didn’t seek to put distance between Oakland and Parkland, Fla. He played a video from Wednesday’s horror at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in which students huddled in a classroom, screaming as gunshots were fired right outside the door.
Solomon wanted to make a point, and he demanded that the educators remember it. The students in the footage were crouched in a corner, nothing between them and the door. There was no barricade, Solomon said. There should have been.
“Lock down and barricade that door,” he said, urging them to hinder an assailant for, ideally, at least five
minutes.
Friday’s training was not a reaction to Parkland, but a response to a cascade of events in other towns from Connecticut to Oregon. The district planned the training a few months ago, said spokesman John Sasaki.
“For the most unfortunate reason, it couldn’t be more timely and important,” he said.
The voluntary training offered the 40 educators and staff an opportunity to think about what could happen in a sudden attack, and how they might save lives, said Oakland schools Police Chief Jeff Godown.
“In 2018, we live in a country where you have to go home and tell your 3-year-old that if someone comes in and tries to kill you, here’s what you do,” Godown said.
He added that he believes public officials must address the wide availability of highpowered guns, or else, “this isn’t going to stop.” The suspected shooter in Florida legally purchased a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle, a weapon used repeatedly in U.S. mass killings, authorities said.
Godown said he will work with district leaders to make the training mandatory for district staff.
Thinking about what to do in advance of a potential rampage, Solomon said, is a critical step.
During the training, without warning, Solomon pushed play on the video. The room was filled with loud gunshots and the clink of shells hitting the ground. Many viewers flinched.
“What do you do first?” he asked as the gunfire stopped.
While the first instinct might be to take cover, the better option might be to run, Solomon said.
“Every scenario is different,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is improve your odds when these things happen.”
He offered basic instruction on situational awareness — to know all exit routes and how to quickly get to a phone, and what can be used to properly barricade a door. Solomon told the educators he wanted them to be more like the fictional character Jason Bourne, a CIA spy who is expert at taking stock of his surroundings, and less like someone who walks down the street looking at his phone as he plunges through a manhole.
He also offered guidance on how to identify and document the “1 million small and alarming behaviors” that tend to be exhibited by a school shooter prior to an attack.
That could include disturbing messages written on school assignments or social media, verbal threats, a sudden affinity for camouflage or warrior clothing, or an obsession with weapons.
Solomon emphasized that the average person is more likely to die from food poisoning than from an active shooter, but added, “When they do happen, they’re catastrophic.”
Mass shootings are on the rise, and about a quarter of them happen in schools, he said.
Principal Minh-Tram Nguyen of EnCompass Academy in East Oakland said she had been to the training once before. The district offers them at least a few times a year. She hadn’t planned to attend Friday because of other pressing matters, but then 17 students and teachers died and she opted for the refresher course.
She held back tears as Solomon clicked through a slide detailing the number of dead and wounded in the Las Vegas shooting in October, and two others that showed elementary school victims from slaughters in Newtown, Conn., and Townville, S.C.
Then came the video from Parkland.
“I knew going into this it was part of the work,” Nguyen said. “It just doesn’t always feel like it would be enough.”