NL Teachers, Staff take Active Shooter Training

Students in the New London School District are released from school early on Wednesdays. The teachers and staff are still on-duty on those afternoons, however, which are spent on a wide range of educational topics. All the time spent has the goal of improving the district. On Wednesday, Feb. 26, New London’s SRO Deputy Roberts led an active shooter training for New London Community School District staff. His fellow HCSO deputies, the New London Police Department and the Iowa State Patrol all provided their assistance. Everyone is dedicated to keeping Henry County students and school staff safe.

All too often a community believes, “It can never happen here.” Unfortunately, the truth is it can happen anywhere. Henry County Law Enforcement and the Henry County Schools recognize this fact and are doing everything in their power to keep it from happening. That involves training, and making sure everyone is prepared to respond correctly should a threatening intruder appear at the schools.

At this time there is still a Critical Infrastructure Security Agency. This agency helps define and provide active assailant emergency actions plans. By their definition an “active shooter” is an individual who is engaged in killing, or attempting to kill, people in a confined and populated area. Active shooter incidents are often unpredictable and evolve quickly, but the chaos can be mitigated by trained people.

In many cases, there is no selection of victims and the situations are often over within 10-15 minutes. Many times, this means law enforcement has not yet arrived on the scene. This means school staff must be prepared both mentally and physically to deal with an active shooter situation.

SRO Deputy Roberts and his fellow officers gathered information to present to the New London staff. After some general discussion, the group divided up into smaller groups. Small groups of teachers and staff were formed to encourage everyone to ask questions that concerned them no matter how insignificant they might seem. The method was very successful.

When law enforcement and the CISA talk about physical preparedness to deal with an active shooter, they are not encouraging anyone to charge the assailant and put their own life at risk. They are speaking about having each room in the school lock from the inside so that access to students is slowed down. Giving teachers time to assess the physical characteristic of their room and what furniture might be used to best block the door and keep an assailant from entering. Active shooter alerts are not like fire drills where everyone is taught the correct door to exit. Calmness and common sense are important at every stage of the alert.

Deputy Roberts paraphrased his colleague’s words when he said, “The small group format was very successful.”

All the officers involved felt comfortable with the results of Wednesday afternoon’s work.