More than 100 police officers, firefighters, and paramedics converged on Chico High School Thursday. Authorities were practicing for what’s become a too frequent occurrence in communities across the nation: a mass shooting at a school.
With sirens wailing and periodic simulated explosions, the first officers arrived several minutes into the drill—a gunman opening fire at Chico High School.
Cautiously, yet deliberately, they advanced across courtyards, approaching the supposed threat.
A lot has changed in America in recent decades, and police tactics have had to adapt said Chico Police Chief Michael O’Brien.
“The days of waiting and calling out SWAT teams (are over) we know time is of the essence,” he said.
Jim Hanlon, Assistant Superintendent at Chico Unified School District said tactics have also changed in the classroom. Fire alarms no longer trigger evacuations, unless verified. Not after gunmen in Parkland, Florida activated a fire alarm and opened up on fleeing students.
O’Brien said responding officers are ready to confront a gunman solo.
“If we have someone here that, meaning we have an active shooter and someone is shooting and killing people, the expectation would be that they would engage, and every officer on my department I know would engage that threat,” he said.
O’Brien described the new reality of regular mass shootings as “pretty horrific.”
“These students and society today they have to essentially give thought and preparation to someone coming in to a school campus of all things and actually killing kids,” O’Brien said.
The exercises, following a simulation a month earlier at Pleasant Valley High School, are meant to improve communication and coordination between all local first responders.