City, county, state and federal agencies on the North Olympic Peninsula practice plans to avert the kind of carnage that wracked Umpqua Community College on Thursday in Roseburg, Ore.
Security personnel at Peninsula College campuses in Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Forks are not commissioned law enforcement officers, carry no firearms and have no arrest powers because the state Legislature has not granted the school such authority.
The agencies that would answer crises at schools or other places where people gather, “regularly train individually and collectively for active-shooter situations,” Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict said Friday.
“While I think the chances for such an event in our community are remote, I am confident we can respond quickly.”
In Port Townsend, practice takes place in the vacant Lincoln School building, giving responders an opportunity to train in actual classrooms and hallways, according to Detective Luke Bogues, Port Townsend police spokesman.
“It gives us a unique ability to train in an environment that’s a real school situation,” he said.
Port Angeles police “have an immediate quick response to any school,” said Brian Smith, deputy police chief.
Besides targeting armed assailants, the plan provides for establishing “a safe envelope for other personnel to come in” to protect potential victims and aid injured victims, Smith said.
Planning sessions and practices involve school personnel in Port Angeles and schools in Clallam County’s West End, he said.
According to Benedict, coordinating agencies include the Border Patrol and firefighter-paramedics.
In Jefferson County, they include East Jefferson Fire Rescue and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
“It will be anybody and everybody that’s available,” Bogues said.
Smith declined to provide details of the strategy to avoid informing potential attackers about the plan, but said, “We’ve thought about how to control things for the past several years.”
On Thursday, a 26-year-old man killed nine people and injured at least nine others when he opened fire at Umpqua Community College.
The shooter, identified as Chris Harper-Mercer, died after being wounded in an exchange of gunfire with officers and shooting himself.
Smith said law enforcement officers work with school personnel “to empower them with some inside information from us to look for places to improve.”
Such steps include:
■ Keeping room keys and cellphones close at all times.
■ Being always aware of students’ and visitors’ conduct and demeanor.
■ Locking down the campus immediately.
■ Establishing rapid communications with other personnel.
■ Planning escape routes.
“We try to make people in vulnerable situations less vulnerable, to change the paradigm, to make them more resilient,” Smith said.
Although the chances of a tragedy like Roseburg’s happening in Port Angeles are “very, very remote,” he said, “we train for possibilities, not probabilities.”
The events at Umpqua Community College illustrated one change in law enforcement response that’s occurred in recent years, he said: Police immediately engaged the shooter with gunfire.
“That’s a huge, huge shift that’s been engaged nationwide,” Smith said, compared to police strategy during the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.
There, police met criticism for not more quickly confronting students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
The pair shot themselves after a 49-minute shooting and bombing spree that killed 12 students and one teacher and wounded 21 more people. Three other people were hurt fleeing the school.
Bogues agreed that Columbine, where first responders waited for a special weapons and tactics team to arrive as they set up a perimeter, had “totally changed the response” protocol.
“Force in any form — any counter force to those events — almost immediately put a stop to it,” he said of subsequent active-shooter situations.
“Either individuals surrender or they kill themselves. We don’t wait for a special weapons and tactics team or to set up a perimeter.”
As for Peninsula College’s own policy, the institution has an emergency management plan “that addresses hostile intruder (active shooter) situations,” according to spokeswoman Kari Desser.
The college also “has performed tabletop exercises for active shooter scenarios,” she said.
“Our campus has hosted training sessions for faculty, staff and students related to hostile intruder/active shooter [situations] that incorporate a lockdown drill.”
The school’s next lockdown exercise is scheduled for Oct. 15, Desser said.
Peninsula College in Port Angeles has one campus safety operations manager, one campus security officer and two part-time security guards who are not commissioned law enforcement officers but who act in an “observe and report” capacity, according to Desser.
“This means there is no arrest power and, if the need arises, we contact local law enforcement for criminal or civil manners,” she said.
Although the state Legislature has authorized four-year colleges and universities to maintain commissioned police forces, it has not extended such authority to community or technical colleges, of which Washington has 34.
Bogues agreed with his Clallam County counterparts that chances of a mass murder were remote, “but we want to plan for those things because we want to be prepared.”
School killings in the United States, he said, date back to the 1920s, although the Columbine massacre riveted the nation’s attention, followed by multiple killings at schools and theaters around the country.
“None of these events are new,” Bogues said, “but the prevalence of the 24-hour news cycle gave us a chance to look at the fact that these events are possible.”
_______
Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
