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Officials prepare for the unthinkable
By MONIQUE FIELDS, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- It looked real. Police cars rushing to a middle school with sirens blaring. Five officers walking in the school with guns drawn. It sounded real. "Shots fired at John Hopkins Middle School," police scanners announced. But it wasn't real. It was a drill that was videotaped to help city and school officials prepare for a school shooting, a prospect that has become more real in the minds of school officials, students and parents in the wake of the 1999 Columbine shootings. In Friday's scenario, a science honor student who has been suspended from school sets off a bomb in the school's courtyard. "Students and staff, we are in lockdown," principal Edward Baldwin announces over the school's intercom. The gunman runs through the school's courtyard and shoots two girls and runs to Building 6 and shoots two boys. The first officers on the scene catch a glimpse of the suspect wielding a .38-caliber pistol. They slowly walk into the school and find the two boys sprawled on the floor. The gunman takes hostages and barricades himself in a classroom. St. Petersburg police dispatch the TAC team, short for Tactical Apprehension and Control, and about three dozen team members head into a back entrance. They pick up the four wounded and take them to the cafeteria, which has become a makeshift triage area. The scenario ends when the suspect is led from the school in handcuffs. Scenes like this one are necessary, city and school officials said. They hope it will never happen, but they know it could. "The days of duck and cover are gone. The world has changed and so, too, must police tactics," said Sgt. Kathy Vacca, who supervises school resource officers stationed in middle schools. It was an extraordinary learning experience for students from Pinellas Park High School's Criminal Justice Academy. They played the roles of wounded students and hostages. "I felt vulnerable in there," said Amber Delaney, a Pinellas Park freshman who played a hostage. "The place you feel safe -- you weren't anymore." The drill was an example of how schools and police departments have learned from what went wrong at Columbine. There, the first responding officers retreated from the scene and waited for a tactical team. While they held their ground, 11 students and one teacher lost their lives. The mayhem was compounded when parents rushed to the school. In Friday's drill, St. Petersburg police immediately sent a team of officers into the school. They also took students off campus to Tropicana Field, where they could meet their parents. Officials said the drill went well. Until Friday, police, fire and school officials had performed separate drills. Administrators from private and public schools, as well as Mayor Rick Baker, observed the drill. St. Petersburg police Sgt. Tim Montanari said TAC team members learned they need to improve communication, work on moving bodies and not getting lost in the maze of a school's corridors. Each school has a plan like the one used at John Hopkins on Friday, said Pinellas schools spokesman Ron Stone. Children are safer when they are in school than on the street or at home by themselves, he added. Baldwin will survey his students next week to ask where improvement needs to be made, while all of the agencies involved in the drill will review the videotape and see where they can improve.
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