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Ky. Sheriff`s Department Touts Partnership With County Schools in Active Shooter Training

James Mayse

09/16/2016

Sept. 15--There's a certain type of school shooting that is well-known, such as when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 students and injured 20 more at Columbine High School in 1999, or when a 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 26 students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Overall, mass shootings like Columbine and Sandy Hook are rare officials with the Daviess County Sheriff's Department and Daviess County Public Schools told a crowd of law enforcement officials gathered Wednesday at the Owensboro Convention Center.

"There is not an epidemic of these shootings," Daviess County Sheriff Keith Cain told the audience during a training session that is part of the Kentucky Sheriff's Association's annual convention. "It's not becoming the norm, and it's not only a matter of time before it happens" in every community, Cain said.

"If that were the case, parents would be crazy to send their kids to school," Cain said. "Teachers would be crazy to go to work."

A mass shooting is defined as when a person attempts to inflict mass casualties on bystanders quickly, with little regard for his own safety. In 2014, Everytown for Gun Safety reported there has been 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook. But a review by PolitiFact -- a fact checking website run by the Tampa Bay Times, found that only 15 percent of the shootings listed by Everytown had a profile similar to Sandy Hook. The others involved criminal or gang activity or altercations between individuals, happened outside school hours or where otherwise unrelated to the schools.

"Some were drug-related," said D. Allen Youngman, a special deputy for the sheriff's department who handles firearms and mass shooter training. "Some were while school was not in session."

Cain said: "School shootings are always devastating. But, thankfully, they remain rare."

But, even though mass school shootings are uncommon, that doesn't mean schools and sheriff's departments shouldn't prepare. In fact, state law requires sheriff's departments coordinate with schools. Part of Wednesday's session focused on how Daviess County Public Schools and the sheriff's department have worked together on shooter training -- something school officials initially had concerns about, said Matt Robbins, assistant superintendent for operations at DCPS.

"Schools are in the business of educating people, so all of our training is around that," Robbins said. School officials didn't want the "high-impact, high-trauma training" they heard was being conducted by law enforcement in other parts of the country.

Cain said when working with the district, the goal was not to "use the schools as a training facility" for law enforcement.

"What we wanted to do was come out and establish a training mechanism to let (school staffs) know what to expect of us, and what we expected of them," Cain said.

The school district held its first voluntary training with DCPS staff members in 2015, and had more than 800 people attend, Robbins said. Working with law enforcement on shooter response plans helped schools better prepare lockdown drills, Robbins said.

"Once we (had) law enforcement involved ... those individuals changed the whole tone and intensity of our lockdown drills," Robbins said.

If the number of mass shootings seem to have increased since 2013, part of the reason is the Federal Bureau of Investigation changed its definition of "mass shooting." Before 2013, a mass shooting was defined as an event when four or more people were killed. In 2013, the definition was altered to an event where four or more people were killed or injured, Cain said.

Youngman said there is no "profile" of who commits a school shooting -- although the majority are male. But there are behaviors that can be warning signs, such as a person talking about a mass shooting. During a mass shooting, teachers are expected to close and lock their doors, cover the door window if possible, turn off lights and get the students into the area of the room where they can't be seen from the door window.

To date, there has not been a school shooting where a shooter was able to breach a locked door to get at the people inside, Youngman said.

"We tell teachers, 'We can't help you until we get there. You're the ones who have to keep your kids safe until we get there,'" Youngman said.

If a teacher suspects there a student is planning an assault, they should notify law enforcement. If something happens in the school, such as a sound that could be a gunshot, teachers should call 911 instead of waiting for administrators to do so. The DCPS system does not reprimand teachers who call 911, Youngman said.

Cain said: "Many of these people (who commit school shootings) plan these attacks weeks, months or years in advance ... They have a plan. Do you?"

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse