The sound of simulation gunfire echoed through the halls of Hooker Oak Elementary School on Wednesday.
Officers jogged throughout the school together, firing off shots in an orchestrated active shooter scenario. It was practice for law enforcement who may need to deal with these situations in real life.
In the last year, Butte County residents have faced violent incidents at schools across the region. Last year, a man walked into Feather River Adventist School and shot two children. In March, a Gridley High School student was stabbed by another student on campus.
Chico Police Department Public Information Office, Kayla Gates, said those incidents didn't necessarily play a part in influencing the exercise at Hooker Oak, but she said it’s an important practice.
“It's been about 10 years since we've conducted an on-site training of this capacity,” she said.
“School children are one of our most vulnerable populations. So having the opportunity to partner with the school district as well as our other first responding partners to know how we can most efficiently respond to these types of emergencies is absolutely critical for safety.”— Kayla Gates, Chico Police Department public information officer
It was also the first time Chico PD partnered with Chico Unified, the fire department and EMS on a collaborative training.
“School children are one of our most vulnerable populations,” Gates said. “So having the opportunity to partner with the school district as well as our other first responding partners to know how we can most efficiently respond to these types of emergencies is absolutely critical for safety.”
Broader training for these scenarios includes presentations and discussions, but Gates said the exercise at Hooker Oak is the more active part of the practice.
“We're actually here on scene at a campus and running through different scenarios, and actually getting to see how dynamic these situations are and being able to implement all of the training that we've learned thus far,” Gates said.
She told NSPR that Chico PD will be conducting more of these types of exercises in the future.
“We're getting a lot of footage,” Gates said. “We're working on some training materials so that way we can really refine what we're doing here today and implement it in future training.”
While several officers participated inside of the school, other support staff also set up at a command center nearby the campus.
