For nearly 20 years, we’ve been told that everything changed after the massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, where two heavily armed teens slaughtered 13 people – 12 students and one teacher – and wounded 21 others before killing themselves.
We were told we would never again see the delayed response from law enforcement where the police, including a S.W.A.T. team, failed to immediately intervene and appeared unprepared to handle such a crisis.
Then, 11 months ago, came the shootings at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where a former student murdered 17 people and wounded 17 more without being confronted by an on-campus deputy.
Suddenly, it became obvious that what we were being told wasn’t true – that everything hadn’t changed, that not every law-enforcement agency was properly trained to handle these active-shooter scenarios, that there were still places where school resource officers won’t rush to confront a gunman on campus.
Which raises the question: Is our community one of those places?
So, having read that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office put into effect last week a written policy requiring school resource officers (SROs) to confront active shooters on campus, I called Indian River County Sheriff’s Maj. Eric Flowers to ask about the policy here.
Here it is:
- Run to the sound of the gun.
- Confront and stop the shooter.
- Do both as quickly as possible, even if it means putting yourself in harm’s way to protect students and save lives.
“What we saw in Broward, we don’t want to see happen here,” Flowers said. “The school resource unit falls under my command, and I’ve sat down with each of those deputies and asked them: Are you committed to run toward the gunfire and do everything you can to stop the shooter?
“Every one of them said, ‘Yes, absolutely,’” he added. “I’ve looked into their faces to see how committed they are – again, every one of them – and they told me, ‘Not only do I want to do the job, but I want these kids and their parents to know I’ll do whatever I can to protect them.’
“That’s what we want.”
And if, in the chaos of the moment, there’s some uncertainty by a dispatcher or breakdown in communication that results in confusion about whether the SRO should intervene or wait for backup?
“First and foremost, their job is to confront the shooter and protect the kids in school,” Flowers said. “Some of the deputies have said, ‘Even if they told me not to go, I’d go.’”
In the wake of the Parkland shootings, the Florida Legislature passed a law last year mandating that law-enforcement officers be placed in every school.
Locally, Flowers said the Sheriff’s Office has 26 SROs in 24 schools (19 public, four charter and one private) with two deputies assigned to each of the county’s public high schools, while the Vero Beach Police Department has SROs in three schools (two public, one private) and Sebastian Police Department has SROs in three schools (two public, one charter).
“We had to pull people from everywhere in the agency to cover all the schools,” Flowers said. “Over the summer, after school was out, we posted those positions in-house and also hired from the outside. We then sent them to active-shooter training, including some we sent to a program run by the Florida Association of School Resource Officers.
“Our deputies get active-shooter training every year,” he added. “And we talk about these issues every day.”
Included in the discussions are tips called in to law-enforcement agencies and the school district, warning of potentially troubled students who need to be monitored. Also, the Sheriff’s Office has created an active-shooter policy designed to provide dispatchers with more specific guidelines for handling such situations.
“They’re not normal calls,” Flowers said, “and our goal is to avoid some of the chaos we saw in Broward.”
The Sheriff’s Office also involves the county’s Fire Rescue Squad in its active-shooter training, Flowers said, because “they’re going to be there for triage, evacuating people and setting up rendezvous areas, plus we could use their trucks as a shield, if necessary.”
Many of the enhanced strategies the Sheriff’s Office has adopted were recommended by Undersheriff Jim Harpring, who served on the state commission that investigated the Parkland shootings.
“We really benefited from having him on the commission,” Flowers said. “He brought a lot back to our agency, so we didn’t have to wait for the final report.”
However, Sheriff Deryl Loar wisely decided not to adopt the commission’s recommendation to arm teachers – not at this time, anyway.
Flowers said Loar is concerned about the possibility that, during an active-shooter incident on campus, a deputy or police officer might mistakenly shoot an armed teacher.
“Our greatest concern is that you can’t identify the bad guy,” Flowers said. “Deputies and police officers wear their uniforms on campus. They’re easy to identify. But what happens if a deputy or police officer confronts someone who is dressed in civilian clothes and who is armed?
“It’s a very difficult situation,” he added. “You could have an innocent person who was trying to do the right thing get killed. Nobody wants to see that.”
Nobody wants to see any more school shootings, either.
But we will.
According to a U.S. Naval Postgraduate School database that dates back to 1970, 2018 was America’s worst year for gun violence in schools, with 94 on-campus shooting incidents – an increase of nearly 60 percent over the previous high of 59 in 2006.
The 2018 numbers include the high-profile attacks in Parkland and at Santa Fe (Texas) High School, where in May a teen gunman killed eight students and two teachers, and wounded 13 others.
In the Texas incident, however, police officers assigned to the school quickly confronted the shooter, who wounded one officer but eventually surrendered after being wounded himself.
The officers did what they were supposed to do, putting themselves in harm’s way to stop the shooter and keep more people from being killed.
Flowers believes the same would happen here.
“You never want to tempt fate,” he said, “but I feel good about where we’re at.”
