Mike Wolanin | The Republic Members of the local SWAT team gather at the scene of a police standoff in an apartment complex near L. Frances Smith Elementary School in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, March 11, 2020.
As investigators in Texas continue to examine how police responded to the nation’s deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, Bartholomew County law enforcement officials say they are trained and prepared to respond quickly to an active shooter.
The local response, outlined by the Columbus Police Department and Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department this week, stood in contrast to some of the details that have emerged on how police in the southwestern Texas town of Uvalde responded on May 24 when a gunman opened fired at an elementary school, killing two teachers and 19 grade school students — including a 10-year-old boy who had relatives in Columbus.
Since the attack, Texas authorities have given often conflicting and incomplete information about the police reponse to the rampage as investigators continue working to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team, The Associated Press reported.
During the seige, frustrated onlookers urged police officers gathered outside the scene of the rampage to charge into the school, according to wire reports. Upset that police were not moving in, one witness said he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when the shooter opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him, though a department spokesman said later that they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school or when he was killed.
‘We’re not waiting’
Law enforcement officials in Bartholomew County are quick to emphasize that they would not be waiting around for others to show up at the scene of any potential mass shooting — “We’re going in.”
“We will not sit and wait 45 minutes,” said Bartholomew County Sheriff Matt Myers. “We are trained to stop the threat, and that goes for every deputy on the street. …We do not stand and wait. Our job is to go in and stop threats, and that is exactly what we will do.”
If local police are notified of an active shooter, all Bartholomew County Sheriff’s deputies and Columbus police officers — including those who are off-duty — will be immediately dispatched, officials said.
Additionally, specialty units would be dispatched, including the bomb squad, SWAT team and crisis negotiators, as well as officers from neighboring law enforcement agencies, said CPD spokesman Lt. Matt Harris.
However, whoever gets to the scene first will not wait for the specialty units to arrive, officials said. Every sheriff’s deputy and Columbus police officer has an AR-15 rifle in the front of their squad cars, as well as other equipment they may need to respond to an active shooter.
“We keep our equipment up front with our deputies, and it’s locked up,” Myers said. “All they have to do is push a button and it’s unlocked and they are out of their car with their rifle and they’re ready to go.”
If the first responding officers hear gunfire, people screaming or some sign that the shooting is still taking place, they are trained to go “straight to the threat,” said CPD officer Lt. Josh McCrary, who also is the SWAT commander and a certified active-shooter response instructor.
If they don’t hear anything, a group of officers will immediately do a “slow and deliberate clear” of the building or area, McCrary said.
“Basically, you’re clearing every room looking for the suspect, looking for anything related to the suspect giving you any clues,” McCrary said.
As more officers arrive on the scene, an incident command would then be set up to coordinate efforts, said CPD Chief Mike Richardson.
“Most of the shootings are done in such a quick time, 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes,” Richardson said. “So the first officers there, they’re going in, they’re dealing with (the threat). As more officers arrive … the incident command will be set up at that point in time.”
Active-shooter training
Currently, all Columbus police officers and Bartholomew County Sheriff’s deputies undergo periodic training on how to respond to an active-shooter event, including drills and potential scenarios, officials said.
The training is usually done in the Columbus area and has been at the Bartholomew County 4-H Fairgrounds, the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center near North Vernon, among other locations. The next round of training is expected to take place in August, McCrary said.
“We normally do scenario-based training once or twice a year,” McCrary said. “Basically, over the span of two weeks, we will get each and every officer of the department (and) sheriff’s department through an active shooter course, just basically reiterating the principles of active-shooter training and getting everybody through different scenarios and active shooter situations.”
“We research all the active shooter incidents and try to build scenarios based off of those incidents,” McCrary added. “That way, everybody will know how they’re going to respond to that certain incident.”
The training includes outdoor scenarios such as concerts, as well as office buildings, churches and schools, among other potential targets.
Local law enforcement said they started doing these types of trainings following the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado in which 13 people were killed.
“We’ve got plans. We work with the schools. If there’s an active shooter, we have the layouts of all the buildings. We have a plan on where the kids will go,” Myers said.
‘It could happen here’
The ongoing efforts by local law enforcement come amid a seemingly unending wave of mass shootings across the U.S. in recent years. Just 10 days before the Texas school shooting, 10 Black people were shot to death in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.
The Texas attack was the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
In the Columbus area, there have been threats made against local schools in recent years and violence involving firearms in the workplace.
In 2020, a 38-year-old man carrying two loaded 9mm Ruger handguns in the small of his back in an improvised gunbelt was taken into custody in Central Middle School’s staff parking lot during the school day.
The year before that, an 11-year-old W.D. Richards Elementary School student was charged with a misdemeanor in juvenile court regarding allegations he told classmates on a school bus that he was bringing a gun to school.
In 2018, two local teenagers were accused of making threats following a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people died. One of the teenagers was accused of sending a picture of himself holding a weapon on social media, court records state.
And in 2016, a Cummins employee shot and killed his supervisor and then turned the gun on himself at Cummins Seymour Technical Center.
Local law enforcement officials, for their part, are urging people to report suspicious behavior and threats to police.
“(A mass shooting) could happen here,” Myers said.
“Unfortunately, if you have an active shooter, people are going to die,” Myers added later in the interview. “It’s just a matter of how quickly law enforcement can have that contact with that individual or individuals and stop them.”
