Active shooter drill held at Berwick schools

The acrid smell of gunpowder wafts through the school as children run screaming from the sound of the gunshots.
Police run through the halls, guns drawn, shouting commands as they search for the shooter.
The first officers in must make the gut-wrenching decision to run past wounded students, teachers and possibly other officers. They are tasked with the job of stopping the threat in a school.
“If we stop to render aid, an active shooter could be engaging another classroom,” Berwick Assistant Police Chief David Leonard told the faculty of Berwick High School Tuesday.
Both the Berwick high school and junior high faculties went through an active shooter demonstration in their schools, complete with live fire of blank rounds, while school was closed Tuesday to be used as polling places.
Berwick High Principal Buffy Fegenbush said she arranged the demonstration because she thinks it’s important for the faculty to experience.
“At the beginning of the year, they did a session with just the school administrators and I just thought it was important that the school faculty also experienced it, especially within the setting in which it would happen for them,” Fegenbush said.
Ten upperclassmen who are members of the high school’s Beta Club participated in the drill which depicted the scenario of an active shooter hunting students who are trapped outside the classrooms that are locked during a crisis situation.
Leonard said in 1999, the response to the first school shooting incident at Columbine High School was markedly different. Police set up a command post and waited for a SWAT team.
“The whole time, the shooter was killing teachers and kids,” Leonard said.
Now, he said, the standard response is for the first officer or officers on the scene to enter the building immediately and go directly to take out the threat. The second wave of officers will extract wounded students and personnel.
Berwick’s official response time to anywhere in the town is about three minutes. However, he said that statistic is skewed because many town employees also are auxiliary officers who would respond immediately to such a crisis.
“The way you can tell he’s a good guy,” Leonard told the Berwick Junior High staff, “everyone’s gonna be running out, and he’s gonna be running in.”
Leonard said as soon as an active shooter is reported to 911, an all-points bulletin is issued and officers from surrounding departments will respond. However, Officer J.P. Henry said, Berwick will be the first on site and the first into the building.
According to Leonard, studies show that a school shooter’s goal is to kill more people than the previous school shooter that he idolizes. He and Henry said roughly 60 percent of school shooters will kill themselves when they realize law enforcement has arrived or entered the school.
In the shooter’s mind, he “doesn’t want us to come in and take his glory,” Henry said.
Henry advised teachers to “stay in the fight so they don’t get to those kids.” Anything in the room becomes a weapon in a fight for your life, he said.