Meramec Campus Police Chief stresses the importance of being prepared.
By: Bri Heaney, News Editor
“Learn how to survive a shooting event” is the subheader to the active shooter poster that students may have seen posted around the school. The poster has two purposes. First, it provides instructions for how to respond during an active shooter emergency and second, it is a morbid reminder to reality of the rising incidence in mass shootings in today’s world.
Along with putting out bulletins, STLCC has set up text and alerts and all faculty and staff have overgone training as well.
Meramec Police Chief Adis Becirovic oversees some of the drills and safety procedures for active shooter emergencies. “The purpose of these drills are to teach students not to be scared, but rather, to be prepared,” said Becirovic.
Becirovic said that training and warnings all happen in line with the RUN-HIDE-FIGHT active shooter preparedness program from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. “Lockdown drills in schools became widespread after the 1999 high-school shooting in Columbine, Colo. that left 12 students and a teacher dead. At the time, the massacre was the deadliest school shooting in American history, and it prompted new security measures to be introduced in schools across the US,” said Becirovic.
On Oct. 23 STLCC hosted a school wide drill at the Wildwood campus with a formal statement that “The practice of lockdown drills acclimates both staff and students to the process and probability, and ultimately avoids unnecessary responses.”
Becirovic encourages students to educate themselves on how to protect themselves and others if an active shooter emergency situation were to happen.
