The Owensboro Public Schools district and Daviess County Sheriff’s Office teamed up for the second year to host an active shooter response training session to all new OPS staff members Thursday. Nearly 50 OPS staff members participated in the session held at Newton Parrish Elementary School.
“This training is important because safety is our top priority and it provides and extra layer of security for our faculty, staff and most importantly our students,” said OPS Public Information Officer Jared Revlett. “It gives our staff the tools they need to know how to react in the unfortunate event that this type of situation were to take place in our district.”
While Owensboro Police Department typically services city schools, state law requires county sheriff’s offices to provide active shooter training.
“When we first spoke to DCSO about providing this training, OPD was supportive of them providing this training to our staff,” Revlett said. “We are blessed to have an incredible school resource officer provided by OPD and the training goes hand in hand with his responsibilities, adding an extra layer of security for our students.”
Thursday’s training was presented by Gen. Allen Youngman, a special deputy to the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office, serving as a firearms instructor and liaison to area schools for emergency preparedness.
Youngman, who has studied active shootings throughout the U.S., provided OPS staff with data he has gathered, common factors of those events and practices that can be put in place in the event a shooting were to take place.
“These protocols are not set in concrete,” he said. “They evolve as we learn from tragic events across the country.”
Youngman said he has found that active shooters plan in advance, have the goal to kill as many people as possible, will continue until stopped, are not interested in surviving, typically act alone and are often from small towns. While law enforcement has not been able to pinpoint a specific profile of a likely student attacker, Youngman said 71 percent reported some form of perceived bullying.
While many people believe active shooting situations to be on the rise or occur often, Youngman said this isn’t the case. He said that in the last 30 years 88 people were killed in nine incidents of K-12 mass shootings.
After Youngman’s presentation, he and DCSO provided a specialized role-playing simulation, that focused on best practices that have been proven to save lives in the event of an active shooter situation.
OPS employees were divided into classrooms at Newton Parrish and a “teacher” was elected in each group. Instructed to pretend they were in a typical classroom setting of a teacher and his or her students, trainees were caught by surprise when a gunman, impersonated by a retired DCSO deputy, opened fire in the school’s hallway. While the gunshots were merely blanks, the sound was authentic, evoking fear and emotion from the trainees inside the classrooms.
The simulation allowed staff members to implement the lessons Youngman presented, like utilizing the blind corner of the classroom, where a gunman cannot see from the doorway. Youngman said until the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, the standard procedure was for students to get under desks.
Revlett said every employee in the OPS district has been through the training.
“Last summer, we held five different days in different buildings to ensure our entire staff went through this training before the start of school,” he said. “We now have our new hires go through this training so they are aware of what to do in this type of situation as well.”
Revlett said district officials have also added an active shooter response training video to the safe schools training that all employees must complete prior to each school year to satisfy part of the requirement for SB1 that was passed during the last legislative session.
