The Redmond Police Department (RPD) spent last Friday at Redmond High School (RHS) after receiving a call about an “active shooter” in the building’s B wing.
It was a no-school day for students and a work day for faculty and the call that came in was actually part of an active-shooter exercise. The drill was conducted by the police in collaboration with the Redmond Fire Department (RFD) and Redmond Office of Emergency Management (OEM), as well as RHS and Lake Washington School District (LWSD).
The exercise was run through twice to give as many people within the various departments and agencies the opportunity to participate as possible.
THE IMPORTANCE OF WORKING TOGETHER
The exercise took more than a year to plan and RPD Chief Ron Gibson said the purpose of integrating all the different agencies into the drill is to make sure everyone’s protocols and procedures are aligned with each other.
He said one of the biggest things they hoped to accomplish from the event was to set up an incident command center and make sure they had the ability to prioritize their response and protect life.
In the past, Gibson said police and fire departments have not always communicated together when responding to a call such as an active shooter. This is because they each would have their own objectives to meet, he said. But by establishing a single command post, they can work together.
CHANGES SINCE COLUMBINE
Gibson said after the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, emergency response to active-shooter calls changed. He said now, medical personnel also respond as the police cannot provide aid to injured victims if they are going after a suspect.
“We can’t say, ‘that’s just going to have to wait’ for a long period of time,” Gibson said about tending to the injured.
RFD Chief Tommy Smith added that Friday’s exercise was an opportunity for all agencies to coordinate their responses together. For example, fire and police have to work together as the police must clear an area before fire and medical personnel can enter to extract an injured patient.
Mark Donnell, a paramedic with RFD, said when dealing with gunshot wounds, it is important to get to the patient as soon as possible. He said while tending to gunshot wounds on the spot, their main objectives are to plug the hole, stop the bleeding and then transport the victim. While this may help a patient in the short term, Donnell said the definitive care that could save them is surgery, which is why getting to gunshot victims quickly is so important.
He said in the past, when responding to a police incident, medics would typically stay back until police are done. But this could be the difference of whether someone lives or dies.
Friday’s drill was a chance for them to work with police and practice coming into a situation earlier.
“We rely on police to clear the way so we can do what we do,” Donnell said.
Although Gibson and Smith were in Colorado when the Columbine shooting happened, they were in Colorado Springs — about 66 miles away. However, Gibson has had experience in dealing with mass shootings as he was deputy chief of the Colorado Springs Police Department when a gunman opened fire at the new Life Church in Colorado Springs on Dec. 9, 2007.
Gibson said since Columbine, more police departments nationwide have practiced active-shooter exercises, but they have typically been within their own departments and don’t include other agencies.
Both he and Smith stressed the importance of agencies working together and communicating with each other in such a situation.
Smith said back in Colorado Springs, the police and fire departments were already working together in this way before Columbine happened.
RHS’S ROLE
During the first run of Friday’s exercises, RHS teachers and staff were also on campus to participate. They were also given the option to opt out if they chose.
RHS principal Jane Todd said they wanted to hold the exercise because they know practicing emergency drills can help in preventing and minimizing loss of life and serious injuries.
She said the school has practiced drills for fires, earthquakes and lockdowns, but they had never done a simulation to this extent — in which the police come in to search for a “suspect.”
“They don’t anticipate the shouting, the noise,” Todd said about one way of how Friday’s drill was different from others they’ve practiced.
Todd said not one event prompted the school to want to do the exercise, but she did acknowledge that “these (shootings) happen and have been happening with increasing regularity.”
For her role in the “shooting,” Todd said she was in the main office, pretending to relay information to a 911 dispatcher while associate principal Margaret Kinney relayed information over the intercom as they would receive it from teachers calling in from their classrooms.
“We were feeling a little nervous,” Todd said about how they were before the drill, adding that as things got rolling, it became easier to go into “action mode.”
INSIDE THE CLASSROOMS
Brian Schnierer, a ninth-grade science teacher at RHS, was “teaching” when the “shots” were fired in the hallway outside his classroom. He said his “class” was made up of about half a dozen students — mostly teachers posing in these roles. He also gained a student after one entered his classroom after being “injured.”
He said the drill began with about 15 minutes of action for them and then about 30 minutes of them in lockdown, waiting.
“We were just in our room, doing nothing,” he said.
Schnierer said during that waiting period, it was difficult because they weren’t really receiving any updates about what was happening outside the room and he needed to feel like he was doing something useful.
Schnierer said there were some other moments of excitement such as when they heard over the intercom that the “suspect” had gotten a hold of a set of keys and almost immediately, someone out in the hall began trying to get into his classroom.
In addition, he said the moments when police entered the classroom to clear it and ensure the suspect was not hiding were also intense.
Jeannine Ewing, a physical education and health teacher at RHS, agreed that the drill was intense and she was surprised by some of the emotions the simulation evoked.
Having been at the school for 30 years, she said she has never participated in a drill remotely like Friday’s.
“I’m thankful we did this,” she said.
Ewing said it is good to be proactive when it comes to safety and while dealing with an active shooter may be a difficult subject to discuss, they shouldn’t shy away from it.
As a health teacher, she said she has covered topics such as at-risk individuals, mental health and suicide. She added that the school staff and administrators have worked to reduce the stigma that comes with mental health issues and make sure students who need help are able to get it.
STUDENT PARTICIPATION
In addition to RHS staff and faculty participating in the exercise, a number of students from the school’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) class and drama department volunteered to participate.
“It seemed like it was real,” said ninth-grader Blake Hepner, adding that it was a very informative experience for him, as well.
Reagan Wells agreed.
“The shooter was really scary,” he said.
But as scary and real as the drill may have been, both Hepner and Wells said it was something they think their peers and classmates should have the opportunity to participate in, as well.
“They should do it with all the students,” Wil Helland, a ninth-grader who “died” during the drill, said in agreement.
Todd said the RHS staff and administration will discuss the possibility of holding a drill with the rest of the student body, but they want to be careful to not throw kids into crisis as some might panic during a simulation.
She said the most they would probably do is hold table-top exercises in which students are broken into small groups and given emergency scenarios and asked what they would do in the situation.
In addition, Todd said during the next lockdown drill, they might have teachers discuss with their students what they would do in certain situations. For example, she said they can discuss what can be used to barricade doors and block windows and what could be used as defensive weapons since sitting and being quiet might not always be ideal. Sometimes fighting for your life is the best option, Todd said.
