NCJ Number
242626
Date Published
August 2012
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Four case studies of violent attacks in school or drills for such attacks show the critical importance of using drills, site visits, and the sharing of building schematics with first responders in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of responses to such incidents.
Abstract
The first responders (police, fire, and emergency medical services personnel) in the Columbine High School shooting (April 20, 1999) were unfamiliar with the school layout after recent building renovations, which presented challenges in planning response operations and securing the building in a timely manner. In the Platte Canyon High School Shooting (September 27, 2006) in Park County, CO, sheriff's deputies were familiar with the school layout, enabling them to locate the shooter within minutes of arriving on the scene. In 2010 at the University of Texas at Austin, a student randomly fired an AK-47 as he walked across campus, he then entered the Perry-Castaneda Library (PCL) and fired a shot, killing himself. During the response, the operations section chief (OSC) directed the teams to conduct building searches because of unconfirmed reports of a second suspect. The OSC assigned a University of Texas police officer to each team to provide information on locations and the layout of the buildings being searched. The Chapman University in Orange, CA, revised its active-shooter plans in 2011. As part of this process, the campus police provided schematics of university buildings to the Orange Police Department, so as to expedite its response during an active-shooter incident. The California State University in Fullerton, CA, conducted an active-shooter drill in 2011 and found that some officers from participating agencies were not able to identify key buildings on campus, which hindered their ability to reach strategic locations in a timely manner. 7 citations