News / Education
New Rapid Response Aimed at School Shooters
Schools and SWAT teams are training together to quickly put down violent offenders.
DENVER, Colorado, August 24, 2010 -- School Safety Partners has released an exclusive video which reveals the latest police and SWAT procedures designed to efficiently address Columbine-style school shootings and violent intruder attacks.
The video contains 5-1/2 minutes of action footage covering a recent full-scale exercise at a high school in Utah. It shows how Federal training from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for school staff now allows schools to partner up with local first responders and improve school safety.
Basic training is prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools through their Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) grant program. Advanced training is offered through a number of other sources approved by DHS or hosted by schools and school districts.
Complementing the Federal support, new school safety technology turns a school's 2-way radios and surveillance cameras into tools that help police and SWAT teams achieve the pinpoint accuracy of a smart bomb when it comes time to neutralize violent offenders.
Applied more broadly to handle other types of crises, technology that provides interoperable communications between schools and first responders can be the primary enabling technology for the community partnering envisioned at the Federal level. Special training in 2-way radio interoperability for schools is offered nationwide by SchoolSAFE Communications.
The School Safety Partners video, presented here, was produced using only the unrehearsed radio dialog that was captured during the exercise and the synchronized video footage caught on 8 different surveillance cameras mounted outside and in the school hallways.
As the viewer follows the shooters, exercise facilitators can be seen standing by to guard against mishaps, operating the smoke machine, and dispensing ammo to the actor-gunmen as they take hostages.
The maneuvers of the three law enforcment teams seen in the video are based on the information they receive moment-by-moment, with no scripting.
Viewers will hear the school principal use his newly-acquired radio communications skills to help provide crucial behind-the-scenes support so that the teams can quickly box in the gunmen before rushing through the last door to take them down.
Visit School Safety Partners at http://schoolsafetypartners.org to learn more about how schools in Colorado and other states are using new approaches to address a wide range of school safety issues.
