Police train for school shooting and mass casualty incident in Whitesboro

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst – police officers from across New York state came to Whitesboro on Monday to participate in a school shooting drill to better prepare for the day they hope never comes.

From the Oneida County Sheriff's Office to the Inlet Police Department near Old Forge and beyond, Whitesboro Middle School had officers willing to learn as much as they could give back to their departments.

Principal John Egresits said there is important collaboration with law enforcement. While the school can serve as a training center, officers from the Yorkville Police Department can get a better overview of the facility.

The principal added that the Yorkville School District conducts drills with its students four times a year so they know what to do.

“We conduct these exercises four times a year on a mandatory basis… We take this very seriously,” Egresits said.

But currently it is not the children who are conducting the exercises, but the police officers, school police officers, deputies, firefighters and many other authorities.

“Mass accident”

Yorkville Police Chief Frank Allen said the training included first aid courses for officers who sustained gunshot wounds or injuries, as well as other scenarios that could arise in a “mass casualty event.”

Officer Cosmo Pellegrino began the day with a lecture and asked those in attendance if they had taken the training. Almost every hand went up. When Pellegrino asked people to keep their hand up if they had taken the training in the last two years, more than half of the hands went down.

“If you've taken this training, however long ago, you know that tactics can change and you can go home with something that wasn't taught last year,” Pellegrino said.

Discussing events with many casualties, Pellegrino said Columbine set the standard.

“First responders play a critical role in a shooting situation,” Pellegrino said. “But standard procedure at the time was for officers to mark a perimeter and monitor the scene. That was just 25 years ago. And that should seem absolutely idiotic to all of us in this room.”

“If killing is happening here, an officer must intervene,” he added. “Stop the killing, stop the dying.”

Something to prepare for

Allen said police do not want a school shooting, but they must prepare for it.

When it was time for the exercise, the volunteers took on the roles of students, victims and attackers, working in pairs as they would in a real situation while a trainer watched the officers apply what they had learned in lectures and practical exercises earlier in the day.

In one case, two police officers were confronted by a “student” who held a knife to their throats, behaved erratically and screamed that he wanted to kill himself.

An officer tried to get to know the actor, asked him his name, and tried to make it clear that he did not mean to hurt him and could not put down his weapon until he dropped the knife. After talking to the student with the knife and coaxing him, the trainer praised the officer's behavior.

“I like what you did. What you need to remember [in this situation] is that he is a victim of himself,” the trainer said. “He is going through a mental crisis and we don't know what brought him here. He needs human behavior. All he sees is a person in uniform pointing a gun at him… Convince him to drop the knife.”

Towards the end of the exercise, Allen said he considered the training successful and would repeat it next year.

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