Best response? ‘No boilerplate answer’
When asked what they would do in an active shooter situation, most area school and youth resource officers gave the same answer.
Activate a lockdown. Communicate with dispatchers. Move toward the threat. Mitigate it, if possible.
But when it comes to what teachers and school administrators should do in the same scenario, the answer is less clear.
“I can’t give you a boilerplate answer because depending on what the situation is, where the teacher is, what the threat is, that would determine how we would direct them to respond,” said Christopher Ferace, deputy chief of the Norwich Police Department.
Because the school board last year elected not to fund a school resource officer position, he said, Norwich police no longer have one in the middle school. Still, Ferace said officers work closely with the schools to prepare them for any potentially violent incident.
What if one shooter is inside the building but another is outside? What if the teacher is outside with students when a shooting begins inside? What if there’s clearly one shooter and the person is nowhere near the teacher’s classroom?
“Sometimes you have to use common sense,” Ferace said.
In the case of the teacher already being outside, for example, he said it likely would be smartest for the teacher to usher students to a neighboring building instead of returning to the school for shelter.
“The biggest thing is preparation
and planning, so when the moment comes, you’ve thought of what you’re going to do,” he said.
In Waterford, Officer Steven Whitehead pointed out that officers gave similar answers to the first question because they train together frequently and do so under the same agency, the Law Enforcement Council of Connecticut.
“The schools, administrators, cops — everybody is on the same page,” said Whitehead, whose office is inside the high school. “That’s what’s great about this area.”
He said Waterford is lucky because at least one member of the police force has been stationed in the schools since 1988. In addition to Whitehead, Officer Cynthia Munoz works in Clark Lane Middle School.
“We’re constantly changing, updating, talking about, sharing” best practices, Whitehead said. “God forbid, if we have an incident and know officers from other departments are coming, the administrators and other officers will know exactly what to do.”
Some departments don’t have full-time school resource officers, but have officers dedicated to being in the schools.
In Ledyard, for example, Officer Rick McSwain teaches DARE and spends a good amount of time in the schools but also has regular patrol duties. He said other officers also walk through the schools in Ledyard and Gales Ferry when they can.
McSwain pointed to an August 2016 active shooter training session as one way the two town entities have worked together. The three-day seminar, he said, resulted in policy changes that increased preparedness and safety in the schools.
Stonington also has a youth officer, Tom Paige, who isn’t technically a school resource officer because he doesn’t have an office in the schools. But according to Capt. Todd Olson, Paige spends a great deal of time in the town’s schools.
Olson said Officer Ed Cullen, who is trained in active violence incidents, also has been working with school officials since the shooting in Parkland, Fla., to ensure their policies are up to date. In the past, officers additionally have drilled at the schools and toured them to become familiar with the buildings’ nooks and crannies.
In East Lyme, Officer Don Hull is in his first year as a school resource officer, a position Chief Mike Finkelstein created when the East Lyme force became independent last July.
Hull reiterated much of what other officers said, and added that everyone — not just educators and police — can be proactive. “What started with 9/11 — ‘if you see something, say something’ — I think that unfortunately is part of what the education world involves now, too.”