Ohio Gets Proactive in Addressing School Shooters

By Ken Hanson

Readers of this website know I have written frequently (see here and here and here) on the subject of School Shooters. To me, it has always been a simple equation:

1.) You will never prevent school shootings,
2.) School shooters are on a one way trip and desire martyrdom, and
3.) The most effective response to a school shooter will come from the folks being shot at.

While I am still a proponent of these views, I am pleased to report that Ohio is being very proactive in addressing the police response part of the equation.

Recently I attended multi-jurisdictional training put on by the Ohio State Highway Patrol in Delaware County. Over the two days of training at least half a dozen local agencies took part. Before looking at this training, it is important to understand the past doctrine on active shooter response.

Until very recently, the doctrine was to respond to the scene, secure the perimeter and call the big guns and big armor (SWAT). Unfortunately, inside the school, someone is being shot an average of once every 15 seconds. The pinnacle of this mindset meltdown came at Columbine. Since then, the mindset has gradually shifted to confronting the shooter as quickly as possible. At Virginia Tech, confusion led to the initial quick response being misdirected. But still, once the correct location was identified, officers on the scene tried to get to the shooter quickly, including trying to shoot-off locks and chains placed on the exterior doors by the shooter. Even in the Amish school shooting, officers were literally pulling boards and breaking windows trying to get their sights on the barricaded target.

When Governor Strickland first took office, he took the lead by asking the Ohio State Patrol what Ohio was doing in the area of school shooter response. As a result of these consultations, the Governor directed the OSP to create reaction forces trained for school shootings. Additionally, and most importantly, recognizing that these reaction forces will almost never be the ones to respond in a meaningful way, the Governor took the additional step of directing the reaction forces to go forth and provide free training to local departments, including providing all of the equipment and salary reimbursement for the officers attending the training. In other words, a proactive program was set up that was budget neutral for even the smallest of departments.

This is critical, because many of the smaller departments simply do not have the training resources, budget, time or equipment, to conduct this type of training. Now the OSP comes on site with trucks of material and equipment, and conducts the training across Ohio, open to all departments in the area. This multi-jurisdictional component is so critical, given the mindset shift of the past decade. Whereas in the past the first-responding patrol officers would secure and wait, the current theory is “First 3 or 4 on the scene GO!”

It is easy to imagine a scenario at many rural Delaware County schools where the first 3 or 4 might be an officer from a local PD, a State Trooper, a Deputy Sheriff and maybe even a Park Ranger. Giving all departments in the area the chance to train together is rare, and critical, if they are going to be thrown in the crucible of an active shooter scenario together. Simply put, other than taskforces or mutual aid SWAT teams, departments usually do not train together. It is also very important that all of these departments at least understand the same basic play book pages, saving precious minutes later on the scene of a real emergency, minutes that are not being spent discussing strategy. There will be no standing around discussing how to proceed.

This training also provides a full and frank forum for the exchange of ideas and debriefing. Virginia Tech, for instance, where the heroic officers were trying everything to get through the chained doors. Somewhere along the line someone pointed out, “They all arrived in cruisers, they should have smashed the cruisers through the doors.” Everyone who was thinking about equipping bolt cutters or lock shot for the shotguns smacked their foreheads at that moment with a great big “Duh!”

I won’t go into the details of the training, as the last thing I want to do is give some nut-job wannabe a free peak at the play book by publishing this article. Suffice it to say that having been through some fairly “big boy” training in my time, the OSP is absolutely on the right track with the level, developmental appropriateness and tactics being presented. Further, having all the role players put the police through their paces in actual schools using Simunition is top notch training as far as value, regardless of what is taught. Until you go busting down that school hallway with screaming people running towards you, knowing only that some bad guy is someplace, gets the heart rate going.

I applaud Governor Strickland and the Ohio State Highway Patrol for their leadership in this area.

Ken Hanson is a gun rights attorney in Ohio and is the attorney of record for Buckeye Firearms Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in the Heller case. He is the author of The Ohio Guide to Firearm Laws, is a certified firearms instructor and holds a Type 01 Federal Firearms License.