UCA holds active-shooter exercise

RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — Minton Hall at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway has been empty for several years, but on a sunny afternoon, the building was filled with student actors.

Shots were fired, but not really.

Several were “injured” and others pronounced “dead” on the scene.

The shooter, students and even the media were all actors taking part in UCA’s first active-shooter training exercise on Thursday, March 11 for the UCA Police Department, Faulkner County safety officers, nursing students and more.

UCA Police Lt. Rhonda Swindle described the scene. “The suspect walked in and opened fire,” she said. “Then the contact teams at UCA responded to neutralize the threat.”

Next, officers escorted students out of the building toward the nearby football field. They were told to keep their hands above their heads to be searched.

Some were hysterical.

“Those are some of the better actors,” said Jeff Pitchford, UCA vice president of governmental relations.

Others looked worried and hugged their friends.

It was a realistic scene, however, on Oct. 26, 2008, when two students were killed on campus in a drive-by shooting.

Four suspects, who were not UCA students, were charged with two counts each of capital murder in the deaths of Ryan Henderson, 18, of Little Rock and Chavares Block, 19, of Dermott. Nonstudent Martrevis Norman, 19, was wounded.

In the March 11 exercise, students portraying the media stood at the perimeter and attempted to get information from a member of the UCA Police Department.

Taylor Lowery, 19, of Rogers played the role of a member of the media. She is a sophomore journalism major.

Lowery also was on campus when the real shooting happened in 2008.

“It (the shooting exercise) didn’t make me uncomfortable or anything, because obviously I knew it was a secure situation, but it did bring back memories of 2008 and how kind of shocking it was, and unexpected,” Lowery said.

Both incidents, in 2008 and last week, were handled professionally, she said.

“I think they handled everything in 2008 very professionally and se-curely with the well-being of all the students and stuff in mind. But, I do think this is a little something extra that covered some bases they weren’t prepared for, maybe,” Lowery added.

She said e-mail and textmessaging notifications, as well as a voice-alert system, were used for the first time.

“The loud speaker, they did kind of discover it was muffled and hard to hear,” she said.

Swindle agreed and said the exercise is being evaluated.

“All that paperwork is coming in. We also had all the players do surveys of what their opinions are. I haven’t gotten them all processed, ... but several of them said the sirens worked OK, but the message that comes after it was muffled and hard to understand. So, this is the first time we’ve really got to test that, and it was good information. We may decide not to even have a verbal message after that, but we found out the siren worked.

“The text-messaging worked great,” Swindle said.

“After 2008, a lot of parents were inquiring about how can my son or daughter get this message faster? Within a few minutes of the exercise getting started, the messages went out,” Swindle said.

Pitchford said UCA police responded to the 2008 shooting about a minute after calls were received. He was impressed with the response time to the “shooting” on Thursday as well.

“You can always improve your response time - always,” he said.

Pitchford explained that if the event had been a real emergency, instructions would have been provided to students about where to go and what to do. Emergency text messages and emails were also sent to each student and university employee.

The Conway Fire Department and Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services responded to the scene shortly after police officers arrived. However, medical help could not be sent into the building until the perimeter was secure.

“It is a timing issue,” Pitchford said. “The faster they get this secure, the faster MEMS can come in.”

However, for some students, it was too late. Students were identified as shooting victims by cards on their shirts stating their injuries.

They were carried outside on stretchers and taken to a designated triage area.

UCA Health Center staff participated in the exercise as well. There, nursing students and Health Center employees received training in emergency procedures.

Pitchford said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security now requires American colleges and universities to participate in training programs like UCA’s active-shooter exercise.

“It usually takes two years to plan an event like this,” Swindle said. “We did it in about six to eight months. We have been working around the clock.

“No other university in the state has done an exercise of this magnitude involving an active-shooter situation. I think it’s just one more step that we’re being proactive and continuing to improve in our police department,” she added.

The overall goal of the exercise was to access and improve emergency public safety and security, public information, communication and warning systems, incident command and incident management, and mass-casualty response.

UCA officials will discuss the exercise and crunch the data to determine what was done well and which areas need improvement.

Pitchford said, “We want to show that we have the best training force at any college in Arkansas. We are a safe campus, but these types of exercises will make us an even safer campus.”

(Senior Writer Tammy Keith contributed to this article.)

River Valley Ozark, Pages 63 on 03/18/2010

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