The Mississippi Legislature mandated all school districts have an active shooter drill in the early part of the academic year and Coahoma County’s was Friday afternoon.
Sherod Reed, statewide instructor with the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) program, instructed Coahoma County School District teachers at the high school Friday afternoon.
Reed discussed handling situations in the classroom during a short lecture to the teachers. Then everyone participated in drills on what to do when a shooter is in a school and saw how to respond when officers were handling situations.
The Coahoma County School District police officers, members of the Clarksdale Police Department, Coahoma County Sheriff’s Office and Pafford Emergency Medical Services all assisted Reed.
Those who worked at CCHS acted as teachers, while teachers from the other schools played the role of students.
“This drill has come about as a result of the numerous school shootings that we had across the nation,” said Superintendent Dr. Ilean Richards.
She said the first really big shooting was at Pearl High School in Mississippi.
“Since then, we’ve had them all over the country,” Richards said. “This past year, the state legislature mandated that between the opening of school and October that we had to have an active shooter drill and that we have to bombard you, if you will, with lots of information about active shooting situations, so we’re here today.”
Reed’s goal was to make sure teachers understood law enforcement’s role in the event of a mass shooting.
“I would say one of the most important things is knowledge is power,” he said. “If you know how to mitigate this and how to deal with this, we’re going to help the general public understand that when they go to Walmart what it is they have to do. You have to understand and know what law enforcement is going to do once they get there. They’re looking for hands.
“They’re looking for certain cues of certain things, so what we want to do is, we want make sure that the general public understand that this is real. This stuff can happen and it will happen. If we are not, as it relates to responders, teaching this to our cohorts, churches – I need everybody to understand this can happen. We need to do these drills. There is a necessity. Nursing homes, hospitals – they need to do these drills because this is the time that we’re living in.”
Reed said shootings could be anywhere.
“No one will ever believe that it will happen,” he said. “Not at my school, not at my church, not at this store, but it will happen and we need to practice for it. And everyone that is doing this is not mental. Some people are evil and it just is what it is.”
Reed referred to the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in 1999 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. in 2012.
“Some people want to be a martyr,” he said.
He said shooters have the mindset of, “‘I just want people to call my name.’ And, truth of the matter is, some of these people would not have ever gotten any recognition they had gotten had they not done these type of acts.”
Reed said no one knew who Adam Lanza was before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but now everyone knows who he is.
The ALERRT program also does tornado, fire and other emergency drills.
“Don’t play with these drills at school,” Reed said. “These tornado drills, these fire drills, don’t play with these because they can happen.
“This school district, along with other school districts across the state, is mandated that they do these drills. My thing is we need to teach our children not to play with this, our staff not to play with this. We have to take a holistic approach is, ‘Let’s be serious about this.’”
CCHS librarian Tracy Lewis said the active shooter drill was very important.
“It’s serious,” she said. “I’ve been in these before because I taught in another state and we did these, so it’s serious.”
