Sheriff Decides The Best Way To Prep Teachers For School Shootings Is To Frighten And Injure Them

from the you-beat-a-dog-if-you-want-it-to-be-mean,-right-Sheriff? dept

Indiana law enforcement has apparently figured out a solution to the school shooting problem: round up the teachers and shoot them. Here's a jolly little anecdote from the Indiana State Teachers Association, detailing an issue brought up during a recent state Senate education committee meeting.

If you can't see/read the tweet, it says:

During active shooter drill, four teachers at a time were taken into a room, told to crouch down and were shot execution style with some sort of projectiles - resulting in injuries to the extent that welts appeared, and blood was drawn.

The next tweet in the thread provides more details:

The teachers were terrified, but were told not to tell anyone what happened. Teachers waiting outside that heard the screaming were brought into the room four at a time and the shooting process was repeated.

I guess terrorizing teachers will somehow prep them for an actual shooting. Not sure how that's supposed to work, but who am I to question the sadism knowledge of law enforcement professionals.

The man behind the training defends the actions of his trainers -- trainers who went unsupervised for at least part of the drill.

White County Sheriff Bill Brooks, whose department led the training in question, said it has conducted active-shooter training with schools for several years and has previously used the airsoft gun.

The plastic pellets they used are 4.6 mm in diameter — slightly larger than a standard BB.

"It's a soft, round projectile," he said. "The key here is 'soft.'"

Maybe so, but at close range they can still leave welts and break skin. And "execution style" generally means the gun is only inches from the person being "executed." Sheriff Brooks defends his officers, but can't specifically say what happened during the active shooter simulation because he wasn't there.

He was present for part of the January training, but not the portion in which the airsoft gun was used.

"They all knew they could be [shot]," Brooks said. "It's a shooting exercise."

The teachers who had the drill imposed on them beg to differ. While they were given face protection and warned the weapons might be fired, they were not notified they would be rounded up in small groups, taken to another room, lined up against the wall, and shot multiple times in the back.

There are no guidelines or laws regulating these active shooter drills. They're left up to the discretion of law enforcement agencies. It seems at least one agency has interpreted this lack of guidance to mean it can engage in sadistic but useless pantomimes that involve emptying their faux firearms into the backs of teachers they're supposed to be instructing.

The problem (well, one of the problems) with this "training" is it does very little to prep teachers for an active shooter scenario. The most likely outcome is a new fear of law enforcement, rather than the polished skill set needed to confront shooters and/or ensure the safety of as many students as possible. It also does not appear to do much to protect kids, as noted in another recent story:

There’s little data to show they do and some evidence that they can make things worse. At Stoneman Douglas, for example, the shooter is said to have used his knowledge of the school’s lockdown procedures to rack up more casualties during his assault. The biggest concern for some experts, though, is that the vast majority of schoolchildren, whose classrooms will never come under attack, are left worse off after they’re made to seriously contemplate their deaths at the hands of a madman.

Active shooter drills “can be very traumatizing for students,” says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University and an outspoken critic of the trend. “Particularly if they are staged in a very realistic manner with fake blood and guns loaded with blanks, running around the school, chasing students. It’s a constant reminder that the bad guys are out to get them.”

The training for law enforcement appears to be at least as free-flowing and scattershot as the downstream byproduct inflicted on educators. There doesn't appear to be a standard set of active shooter best practices, which has resulted in law enforcement officers abandoning their posts and walking away from the sound of gunfire. Instruction should come from nationally-recognized trainers, not just whoever happens to be available at the local cop shop.

Filed Under: active shooter drill, indiana, police, school shootings, teachers