June 12, 2007
D.C. Schools Holding Mock Shooting Rampage Drills
NBC4 reports that Alice Deal Jr. High School in Tenleytown was the first school to hold a mock shooting rampage drill yesterday. The drill, which simulated a shooter coming to the school with a gun intending to kill as many people as possible, will be repeated at other D.C. schools in the coming weeks.
... In the scene, the mock shooter is a disgruntled parent upset about his child's grades. To retaliate, he rushes the school building with an M-16 semiautomatic gun. The rampage begins with a security guard being the first to go down. Then the gunman fires at students.
"We heard the gunshots and my class is on the first floor," student Elizabeth Stone said. "The gunshots were really close by. The teacher went over and closed the door. We had to move our desks and everything."
The mock shooter -- a D.C. police officer in costume -- held a third-floor classroom hostage in the simulated emergency. Then the shooting intensified.
Sounds pretty damn scary. In fact, the story also quotes a parent who has mixed feelings about the drills. On the one hand, everyone seems to agree that schools need to be prepared to deal with deadly situations like these. On the other, simulating the actual sound of gunfire in schools is almost certain to frighten many students, drill or not. What do you think about drills like these in our schools?
Screen capture from NBC4
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Wait - let me make sure I'm understanding this. They had an unnanounced mass-shooting drill in a school, with students in attendance, and actually shot guns or blanks??
Is everyone who works for the city government retarded?
To clarify, it wasn't unannounced.
Administrators and teachers knew what to expect in the drill. They were trained in advance.
This is one of the craziest things I have ever heard. This will be making national headlines by this evening for its level of stupidity.
Please, please, please tell me that DCPS told the kids and their parents about this drill before it was done.
Also, MPD has been doing similar drills at DC colleges in the wake of VaTech. But, unlike this drill, those exercises are done when the colleges are empty of students.
I can't say I like it, but back in the day we had the "duck and cover" drills that, essentially, simulated the end of the world. Those air raid sirens were LOUD.
I think I'm going to have a nightmare tonight and I wasn't even there.
I think a more realistic scenario would involve disgruntled boy/girlfriend shooting rival in hallway.
AO - So, when there's a fire drill, do you just sit under your desk, rocking back and forth, waiting for someone to rescue you? How are you supposed to prepare for an emergency without practice drills?
LOL. I love how the simulated shooter is a disgruntled parent who is seeking revenge because of their child's poor grades. How typical and appropriate in this age of helicopter parents who don't know how to assume responsibility and instead pass the buck.
Where are all the juvies with guns in this city when you need them? I am surprised none of the students took a shot at the guy.
Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life, being a midwesterner, but we were able to do tornado and fire drills without mock sound effects. I think everyone got the idea.
" . . . the mock shooter is a disgruntled parent upset about his child's grades."
Given that a few disgruntled parents have been picketing this school for weeks, was this prudent?
I think most high school students know what gunfire sounds like, even if it's just from movies and video games.
It's not like they were little kids.
Don't get me wrong, my first reaction was to be upset about this. But some of that is mere idea of school shootings, itself an upsetting subject. At least the students get to practice getting to safety, which ought to end with a sense of relief, right? I think it's a necessary precaution to take, but I'm saddened that we live in such a world where we need to take such a precaution.
Now, I'm not advocating that disgruntled parents should show up to school with guns, but maybe if more disgruntled parents showed up at school with guns, DCPS would get the requisite "motivation" to, you know, actually educate kids.
If this had been elementary-aged students I would have been bothered, but by middle school, not so much. Kids need to learn how to be prepared for anything and everything although I do find it funny that they did this drill in a city school, when 90% of the mass school shootings occur in suburban areas, not cities.
BTW, how are they going to conduct more of these in the coming weeks as the report indicates if school is over for the summer on Thursday?!
I'm from CA-my school district had the annual district-wide earthquake drill, complete with evacuation scenarios assigned to each classroom [the classroom has fallen off of it's foundation and you must all climb out of the windows], injuries assigned to some kids who were left behind and-wait for it-a morgue. I was "dead" one year. No, really, that didn't $%#& me up at all.
A little flaw-at the same time as I was being removed to the morgue, there was practice for how to deal with panicked parents who might show up wanting pick up their children. A volunteer "parent" tried to pick me up. Of course no one in that role play knew I was "dead". Some idiots decided to cart me over on the stretcher (yeah, we had stretchers-they were manned by the 6th graders who theoretically would be tasked with search and rescue). The volunteer parents saw my tag and freaked!
Suffice it say, I regularly prayed to NEVER be at school during THE BIG ONE.
Tornado and Fire Drills without klaxons and sirens? In the midwest? Was this an Amish or conservative Mennonite community without electricity? Was there at least a hand-rung bell in the church watchtower?
At least teaching kids how to think quick and barricade the doors against a shooter might help. Those 80's duck and cover drills just drove home the downside of the cold war and MAD.
Really, does anyone think that kids growing up should be sheltered from knowledge of the very real chance they might be shot? Hell, lots of them have already lost family members from that.
Hey Monkey Erotica,
"DCPS would get the requisite "motivation" to, you know, actually educate kids."
Maybe if the "parents" took responsibility at home the kids would, you know, actually learn AND behave!
Laugh now. Forty years ago we were drilling students on how to "survive" an atomic bomb blast, by ducking and covering under desks. But like the earthquake drills of my CA childhood, it's just possible that these kinds of drills could save children's lives. The hardest part is making the drills actually work and getting children to understand when it's not a stupid joke.
Perhaps we should be discussing real world kinds of drills for any future disgruntled employees going "postal"...
Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life, being a midwesterner, but we were able to do tornado and fire drills without mock sound effects. I think everyone got the idea.
Yes, but how do they do it in San Fransisco?
Parents? What parents? Dad's doing five-to-ten for armed robbery and mom's high on cheese heroin. The closes thing that comes to a parent in that household is the XBox and the cat uses that for a toilet.
Why would you announce the simulation of a real life threat as a teaching tool? Did the Columbine and Virginia Tech shooters (and others) announce their arrival? This is a good dose of today's real life danger, be it a parent as a threat (they have assaulted and shot teachers), or another student. Being aware of what to do in the event the s**t flies and what your options are is a very good thing. Just hiding under your desk is not a good option. That's where they find most of the victims.
Had it been announced in advance to the parents, being Tenleytown, the kids would have been kept home and sent to therapy to discuss the "trauma" about what they did not experience.
This training is common sense.
Wow, dopey. Why be so specific in the drill? It's got to be a single shooter? Seems to me the sensible thing to do is have two distinct sirens and distinct alarms. One is the fire alarm and when you hear it you get the hell out. The other is the emergency alarm and when you hear it you lock the doors and stand away from the windows.
Nope, instead we'll drill on one specific scenario that may or may not happen and scare the bejesus out of everyone with simulated gunshots. When these people do fire drills do they set up trash cans burning junkmail in order to reproduce the experience?
Seriously, by high school kids know what gunshots sound like.... especially in this city. I don't see why some people are complaining... So it's ok as long as the kid is playing GTA and blowing peoples brains out from a rooftop with a sniper rifle.. but if someone else is doing the simulating its wrong? These kids need to be prepared for the REAL WORLD. This is better than talking about it, you need to be prepared in advance because as soon as it happens, most people freeze up and can't make decisions. Trauma from a school drill? Please...
This can't be a good idea.
I am with the world's foremost non profit school safety center. We have worked with more than 2,000 public and private schools world wide and our staff have worked in more than two dozen countries and published more than 20 books on school safety. We have extensive experience with school exercises and drills and highly recommend that this specific type of drill not be used as a means to prepare for emergencies. Our experience has been that staff, students and public safety officials can be prepared without the very real physical and emotional danger posed by this type of drill (a police officer was accidently shot and killed in a texas school, four students were wounded in another Texas high school just to name two cases).
While we commend the district and police department's clear dedication to the safety of school children, but we would recommend that a properly coordinate series of drills and excercises be used focusing on the all hazards appraoch. Our experience has been that these types of drills (lockdown drills with blanks fired while students are in the school) don't really improve the readiness of students and staff in relation to the danger, emotional trauma, time and resources expended. Brief lockdown drills minus the simulated gunfire and virtual scenarios work far better without the risks.
Keeping in mind that school violence is not a leading cause of death in American schools it is also important that we not become too focused on school shootings when the worst loss of life in an American school (300 killed was from a natural gas explosion and the second worst was from an arson fire when a fourth grader at a Catholic school killed 95. We see so many of these simulations when many schools have never even practiced shelter in place protocols.
We applaud the desire to protect students but are troubled by the number of these types of well intentioned but innefective and potentially dangerous drills being conducted around the nation.
Why does it not surprise me that they do this in Texas? And why does it not surprise me that people end up shot dead in Texas schools when they do this?
If only we could give the state back to Mexico. If only.
If that drill happened at my school, I know several kids who would have shot the officer in defense of the class. Would have been a real sad day.
Unbelievable. Seriously unbelievable. Our children are having forced conditioning of terror. Public servants are no longer accountable to the people they represent. These drills may actually train children to be indifferent in the face of true terror. Why not train the teachers in a mock drill on Saturday with no children involved?