Teachers were in a meeting in the Pine Eagle Charter School in Halfway, Oregon when two hooded figures burst into the room and sprayed screaming teachers with gunfire. It turned out to be blanks and they turned out to be cops. This was viewed as a useful drill to prepare the teachers for school massacre scenarios.
Such an unannounced exercise could just as well have resulted in a heart attack or other medical emergency. It is not clear what the teachers learned much beyond what it is like to be shot.
Principal Cammie DeCastro noted that they learned that few people would survive among the 15 teachers. Only two were not hit by the spray of gunfire. It is not clear why actually shooting teachers was needed for that particular lesson or what they got from that realization even if they could not have anticipated it.
Elementary teacher Dollie Beck, 54, said that she learned to keep her classroom door locked and to think of windows as escape routes.
By the way, Halfway has a population of only 288. One teacher explained that the exercise was needed because “We are tender-hearted people who give hugs all day. We don’t think like that.”
The question is whether it is necessary to think like that in such exercises. I think it is wise to train staff on all such emergencies but we are seeing districts giving teachers bulletproof shields and arming janitors. Even if you are going to carry out exercises, such unannounced attacks present other risks of actual heart attacks and panic attacks as part of the faux victims. Fortunately, unlike other ill-conceived pranks and exercises, the students were not present for the Oregon practice massacre.
Source: OregonLive
Good comments.
What are we going to do to bring some sanity to these professionals who are going over the edge in these reactions.
School children are more likely to die in a vehicle on the way to or from school than by a school shooting.
Or by a lightning strike.
Why aren’t they out spraying vehicles and droning lightning?
One noticeable thing about propaganda is that those practicing it on the people eventually get sucked into it themselves.
Get a grip state and federal governments … come back to Earth please.
This reminds me of a great bit back during the glory days of SNL. Dan Ackroyd played a home secuity system salesman. He has associates kidnap a family’s children, puts them on the phone w/ their parents, and then sells them the gold package system. He then orders the children released from captivity.
“Police activity as a game. Our leaders have become the lunatic fringe of yesterday. More than stupid, bloody dangerous!”
And what Justice Holmes said. “Bloody dangerous” indeed.
I smell existential crisis . . . or is that cardboard?
Both stupid AND crazy. A lot of both goin’ around…
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/01/18000685-five-year-old-boy-accidentally-shoots-kills-sister?lite How crazy are parents that buy guns for five year olds?
There have been other instances of similar stupidity in schools.Some have been written about on this blog. Recall the incident in South Carolina where LEOs brought dogs into school and terrified the kids.
Impressively stupid.
Police activity as a game. Our leaders have become the lunatic fringe of yesterday. More than stupid, bloody dangerous!
Thank goodness no children were present.. I vote Stoooooooopid…
So what liability would the police have if someone had a heart attack? Apparently you don’t have to live in Texas or Florida to be criminally stupid.
“In any case, a school-shooter will simply hit the fire alarm – every door opens – and then they start shooting up the corridoors.”
Given that the logical response of school-shooter to a locked door environment is to hit the fire alarm, a new fire alarm procedure is required.
Fire alarm goes off.
Everyone stays put in locked classrooms until such time that an actual fire can be confirmed. This can not be somebody shouting “Fire!”. It has to be someone known to the teachers. Perhaps the principal/secretary/janitor would have to communicate with each indivdual classroom.
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Of course, if there is an actual fire ….
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As an alternative, the logical response of a school shooter to such a potentially lethal fire alarm procedure would be set a small fire – or set off some sort of firework/firepot.
THe new improved lethal fire alarm procedure would be for the principal/secretary/janitor to investigate the source of all the smoke coming down the corridoor before communicating with each individual classroom.
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An alternative plan would be to give a gun to “Elementary teacher Dollie Beck, 54” – who will need one as a school shooter would logically have taken out the armed janitor as a first priority – unless the shooter is actually the armed janitor who has snapped as he “Don’t like Mondays / freaking kids / house reposessed”.
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An alternative plan would be to do something/anything so that nobody can accuse anybody of doing nothing – which when it comes down to it is of the utmost priority.
The statistical unlikelihood of a mass shooting in a town of 288 makes drills like this futile. It would be better to prepare teachers to deal with lightning strikes during school picnics or snakebite on the playground, because these are more likely occurrences. I think what passes for a police department there wanted to have some “fun.”
Beyond stupid.
Indeed. What If one of the teachers had been carrying, and shot the attackers?
The teacher would have been charged with unlawful killing – assuming the school was a gun-free zone. Cop-killer!!!
.. which might be all very well … unless there was a fire, for example.
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Increase the potential danger from a ‘normal’ – albeit low-probability event in order to have some possible measure of protection from an event with near zero probability.
Every class begins with a lesson in terror as the door gets locked.
This would happen x times per day on every school day for every year in school.
This in a community of 288 “tender-hearted people who give hugs all day”.
I’m not sure that hugs would entirely counter-balance the years of door locking.
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In any case, a school-shooter will simply hit the fire alarm – every door opens – and then they start shooting up the corridoors.
example number 14,237,893,383 why the meteor can not arrive soon enough. Like the dinosaur this species has grown to its maximum point & needs to be extinct
The school police state is becoming videogame surreal. Beyond that bizarre accomplishment, I am sure there is not a better feeling to carry all day than to think that the next person you see will be aiming a firearm at you with intent to kill. Every door that opens, every tray dropped in the cafeteria, every late kid wandering the halls, every stray basketball, every misplaced lunch bag or backpack is a threat and should be taken as such. You have nothing to fear, but everything…… The police state wins……
This. Is. Madness.
That’s what I was thinking, of one of the teachers had been armed there could have been a REAL shooting….what then?!?
And like everyone I don’t see the point of this…fire drills, and now this?!?
Just STOP advertising schools as “Gun Free Zones”, so the nuts aren’t going there to kill people! If teachers or parents have already been screened and have a CC permit, let them carry there.
I see no up side to this stupidity. Now if one or more of the teachers were armed, it might have drawn real blood from one of the thugish cops.