STORY, VIDEO & PHOTOS BY THE SHERIDAN SUN TEAM
Check back with thesheridansun.ca at 9.am on Monday Nov. 25 for live coverage of the joint Sheridan/Halton Police lockdown drill in SCAET building. The drill will last about 20-30 minutes while police execute a training exercise simulating a school shooting and lockdown situation complete with fake guns and actors playing victims in full costume and makeup. While students in SCAET will be out of sight in lockdown mode, The Sun will be bringing you live team coverage of the whole event!
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Comments
6 responses to “Mockdown 2013 – SCAET lockdown drill and police training exercise”
this is really offensive, and unbelievable. Who’s awful idea was this? Couldn’t the school have had a normal lockdown….??? (now seriously considering if I really should apply to this school)… very disappointed.
tasteless & insensitive if I may add…
I know someone who participated in this and from what I understood about this drill, is that is was meant to be shown to the police force as a video demonstration for training purposes. The people involved where not allowed to release information about it do for many different reasons.
In my opinion, training for these things is important considering it has been happening more often today. However, these school shootings are not the most common situations and when it comes to schools, there are even more rules and concerns to follow. The purpose was to see if it were to happen, what could we do to improve upon our security and how could we better deal with a situation like that.
This was an extremely controlled situation. The simulated shooters were trained off-duty policemen dressed as civilians. Everyone involved knew exactly what would happen: which hallway the police would take, which stairwell they would climb and which rooms they were searching. There were liberties in the acting but the actors could only stay by or in the room they were assigned to. SO if anything went off plan or anything unusual happened, it would stop and the situation would be dealt with.
This was clearly not a careless situation for obvious reasons. Everything was planned, controlled and patrolled the entire time. There were cameras following the camera crew and the policemen and the actors. Everyone knew what everyone looked like so again, anyone out of place or anyone who should not have been there would have been dealt with accordingly.
I think to assume that the police and the school would just do something like this without proper safety precautions, careful planning and strict watching is somewhat foolish and ignorant. These situations happen and we all need to be prepared. People need to realize that these situations are serious, scary and real. Reality is harsh and tragic sometimes and if we can be prepared for those things, less people will be hurt and more lives saved.
In 1989, 14 people were killed in a mass shooting at École Polytechnique in Montreal, 15 in total including the perp.
This promoted a change of the system for tactical response of police to shootings, which were later credited with minimizing casualties at the Dawson College shootings. Drills are important, are theatrics? Probably not.
I want to believe that the police would have the sense to know the difference between the chosen actors to play the perps and a genuine threat.
I totally agree– unbelievable.
Hi,
I’m just writing to express my concern for how horrible of an idea it was, both from the school, and from the police.
First of all, you let all the students know that there is going to be a lock down drill, which is understandable, but then you have police show up firing blanks, actors screaming, and fake blood all over the ground.
If someone was disturbed enough to actually start shooting people, everyone would think it’s part of the plan, including the police, who are expecting all the same things the students are, to hear gun shots and screaming, as well as see blood and “dead” bodies on the ground… To make it worse, once the police catch on, they only have blanks in their side arm, leaving them unable to take down the shooter.
I can’t believe both the police and the school staff thought it was a good idea, if the police and drama/make-up students want to put on a show, they probably should have done it in a controlled training facility, not in a school during class hours…
Unbelievable…