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UR Shooter Drill

vt357

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http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-08-10-700.html

UR hosts 'shooter' drill
Police from U of R, VCU practice response to gunman scenarios

By TOM CAMPBELLTIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Because Virginia Tech's tragedy proved it could happen in Virginia, 14 University of Richmond campus police and four from Virginia Commonwealth University underwent training yesterday in "active shooter exercises."

UR's North Court building simulated Virginia Tech's Norris Hall, where disturbed gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 30 of his 32 victims.

Faculty and staff simulated students and professors.

"Marking cartridges" that fire colored powder from automatic pistols simulated bullets.

Eighteen police officers simulated themselves.

Each exercise was a variation on the basic scenario: A male student has gone off his medications. His girlfriend, another student, has dumped him. Just outside a North Court entrance, he shoots her and runs upstairs to the second floor, firing at professors in their offices and students in classrooms as he goes.

Officers taking part in the exercises first came upon the "dead" girlfriend and a wounded woman, on the floor and screaming for help. Next they started up the stairs after the shooter.

The teams of two or four officers worked their way up the stairs and then down the second-floor hall, clearing the small offices as they went, checking the "dead" bodies they found and telling survivors to stay put. The teams finally confronted the shooter in a classroom at the end of the hall.

The simulated bad guy, Richmond police officer Jason Ozolins, "lost" every time by getting killed, killing himself or giving up.
He and other Richmond tactical training officers took part as instructors.

And late in the afternoon, members of Richmond's SWAT team were called to UR's North Court. Those officers knew they would be called to an exercise yesterday but not where or when.

Some had a little trouble finding the building once on campus, said UR spokesman Brian H. Eckert, but the negotiation exercise with a shooter who had taken a hostage went smoothly.

Chief Bob Dillard of the UR police department said his force must be the university's first line of defense for a shooter or other life-threatening emergency. That takes equipment and training.

He pointed to the ballistic shields his officers were trained to use yesterday as part of the training.

"We have purchased the shields and put them in the police cars since the Virginia Tech incident," he said. "This [exercise] is an opportunity to use it."

Active-shooter exercises not only reinforce standard tactics police officers learn at the academy, Dillard said, they give officers experience at working together, making them better prepared for the real thing.

A new emergency notification system at UR is set to go into operation Sept. 1.

The UR Alert System will send warnings and emergency information by text-message, e-mail and voice mail to campus computers, cell phones and dormitory and off-campus student telephones.

"Members of the university community will receive instructions early in the semester on how to update their emergency contact information," said Kathy Monday, UR's vice president for information systems.

The university is also planning replacement of classroom telephones with speaker-phones that could be used to make announcements, Monday said.

Monday was one of the volunteers simulating innocent bystanders in yesterday's police exercises. She said she was never struck by one of the simulated bullets, which expelled small plastic capsules that opened like flowers and left marks from the soap powder inside.

But John Douglass, acting dean of the UR law school, said he was hit. Despite an instructor's warnings about "welts," Douglass said he got hit only from a distance, which did not hurt him.

"The shooter was very considerate," Douglass said. "When he came up close, he'd say, 'I'm going to shoot the wall. You're dead.'" Contact Tom Campbell at (804) 649-6416 or tcampbell@timesdispatch.com.
I'd like to see how this practice scenario would have been different had one or two of the "victims" been given a pistol of their own.

Notice how the shooter is confronted in a class at the end of the hall. That's a lot of dead before the police even arrive - AND THIS IS IN THE PLANNED DRILLS! :banghead:

Also these drills are for regular police officers. I am not bashing them, but the Virginia Tech Police have a fully equipped and well trained SWAT team - and they still couldn't prevent what happened.

I have always believed in the idea of aim small miss small. When you practice and plan to not be able to stop the shooter until he has killed the majority of his targets, you are going to have the same outcome when it actually happens!

Oh and that last sentence... yeah nevermind.
puke.gif
 

Tess

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Eighteen police officers simulated themselves.

Ouch. I read that wrong the first time.

Even so, how does one "simulate" himself?
 

Citizen

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Tess wrote:
Eighteen police officers simulated themselves.
Ouch. I read that wrong the first time.

Even so, how does one "simulate" himself?

:D:D:D (Dammit, there went a perfectly good slice of delivery pizza and a beer.)


Its a spiritual ability.

No, no! I've got it:

You give theimpression that you are there; but you're not really there when somebody needs you!
 

longwatch

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A loss for the gunman is if he shoots himself? If that is in his plan like Cho, its not a loss, and it sure as hell isn't a win for the cops if the bodies are stacked up like cordwood.:banghead: Sounds a lot like you lose either way if you are a student.
 

Renegade

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Drills such as these are nothing short of a sick and perverted message from our "leaders" that help us feel better. Zero value in the real world.

Ballistic shield - something to slow down the process. The difference between life and death is measured in seconds. Taking the time to open the trunk, fumble through gear, grab a shield, try to run with the thing, and then enter a gun fight - to hell with that! Here is my suggestion - make sure you have your gun and lots of ammo - then haul a$$ in the direction of the gunfire. As a defender we pay you to risk your life and go in harms way. A LEO not running into a gun fight is akin to a fireman standing outside a burning building and refusing to enter until the fire is out - fat chance!

Negotiate with the shooter - waste of time. If he is a bad guy, is intent on doing harm,and has the means to kill he has already crossed the threshold. Take a picture of him holding the hostage, pull the trigger on your .338 Lapua, take another picture of the body with a pile of mush where the head one was, distribute these pics about the schools monthly to let potential murderous hostage takers know to plan for a closed casket funeral.

Active shooter drills, academy training - another waste. Their lives are in no real danger - this will do little to prepare them for the real thing. Rotate all LEOs over to an active battlefield and let them fight for their lives - let them smell gunpowder daily, keep their head on a swivel and really teach them to tune into their surroundings, let them shoot and hopefully kill a few bad guys, the experience will be priceless. Could you imagine a group of battle hardened LEOs rushing to take down a bad guy on campus?

Do we really want to stop massacres at school or are we just talking the talk?

If you are a student...arm yourself. Your choice is to either risk being killed or risk being kicked out of school - your choice. All laws the prevent law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves are illegal and immoral.

When nuts like Wang-Chung realize that they will always be met with deadly force in a very short amount of time they will realize that their dream of a mass killing is not going to happen. Maybe they will get squared away, work through their hardship, become a productive member of society, and write a book or something that will live on forever.

If you were at your children's school with an AR-15 lawfully carried in the trunk of your vehicle and bullets began to fly...what would you do?
 

Citizen

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Renegade wrote:
SNIP Drills such as these are.... (entire post)

The fella's got a point, or two, or three, or...

Grisly photo's wouldn't fly, though. Scare too many sheeple.

Combat vets would tend to make better gun-fighters, I agree. Absent combat experience, drilling is drilling. It can only do so much; and according to combat-experienced officers you still won't really know how a man might react until the shooting starts. But, drilling is better than standing around figuring it out in the middle of the real thing.

Definitely right on the false sense of security.
 

openryan

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, Indiana, USA
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Renegade wrote:
Drills such as these are nothing short of a sick and perverted message from our "leaders" that help us feel better. Zero value in the real world.

Ballistic shield - something to slow down the process. The difference between life and death is measured in seconds. Taking the time to open the trunk, fumble through gear, grab a shield, try to run with the thing, and then enter a gun fight - to hell with that! Here is my suggestion - make sure you have your gun and lots of ammo - then haul a$$ in the direction of the gunfire. As a defender we pay you to risk your life and go in harms way. A LEO not running into a gun fight is akin to a fireman standing outside a burning building and refusing to enter until the fire is out - fat chance!

Negotiate with the shooter - waste of time. If he is a bad guy, is intent on doing harm,and has the means to kill he has already crossed the threshold. Take a picture of him holding the hostage, pull the trigger on your .338 Lapua, take another picture of the body with a pile of mush where the head one was, distribute these pics about the schools monthly to let potential murderous hostage takers know to plan for a closed casket funeral.

Active shooter drills, academy training - another waste. Their lives are in no real danger - this will do little to prepare them for the real thing. Rotate all LEOs over to an active battlefield and let them fight for their lives - let them smell gunpowder daily, keep their head on a swivel and really teach them to tune into their surroundings, let them shoot and hopefully kill a few bad guys, the experience will be priceless. Could you imagine a group of battle hardened LEOs rushing to take down a bad guy on campus?

Do we really want to stop massacres at school or are we just talking the talk?

If you are a student...arm yourself. Your choice is to either risk being killed or risk being kicked out of school - your choice. All laws the prevent law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves are illegal and immoral.

When nuts like Wang-Chung realize that they will always be met with deadly force in a very short amount of time they will realize that their dream of a mass killing is not going to happen. Maybe they will get squared away, work through their hardship, become a productive member of society, and write a book or something that will live on forever.

If you were at your children's school with an AR-15 lawfully carried in the trunk of your vehicle and bullets began to fly...what would you do?
I agree with you that these drills are by no means close to the real thing itself, however, I seem to understand from what you posted that you think they are an entire waste of time.

This is absolutely not a waste of time, the police do recruit a lot of people with combat experience, it a preferabel set of job skills and they like to see it on a resume but, in lack of experience of actual combat, drills are far better than text books or an analysis of the situation, but between these three if they are a combined approach to understanding what a given situation MAY be like, I think they are as useful of a tool as we have right now in lieu of actual combat experience.

If I misunderstood I am sorry, but the second paragraph still stands.
 

unrequited

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I wonder if just for fun, they had ONE police officer simulating a student with a concealed hadgun permit somewhere in the building what would have happened. Two? I guess that would have been cheating... Interesting they won't say how many victims were killed/wounded on average before the teams had time to clear every room to the end of the hall after starting off on the first floor.
 

Grapeshot

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Where do you think we are? Israel? It is almost unheard of to have an armed attack on their children in schools there anymore.

Regarding the recommendation that classrooms have locks installed, what do you think that one well placed shot would do to that lock? Never mind, I really don't need anyone to answer that. Its just more "feel good" stuff albeit of some very minor benefit.
Yata hey
 
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