Ready to take action

Illinois State Police Trooper Ron Caves critiques a Morris policeman’s performance following a drill at Booth Central Elementary School in Wilmington Thursday. The school district has allowed the state police to use the abandoned school as a site for training exercises for local law enforcement personnel. (Herald Photo by Adam Nekola)

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

WILMINGTON – It took officers from four local police agencies to take down a gunman holding Booth Central Elementary School hostage Thursday.

Luckily, Booth Central in Wilmington is no longer in use by the school district and the gunman was part of a police training simulation.

Officers from the Grundy County Sheriff’s Department and Morris, Coal City and Minooka police departments have spent the last four days training with Illinois State Police on rapid deployment for an active shooter situation.

Thursday morning, about 15 officers were broken up into groups to practice handling four active-shooter situations. Earlier in the week, the officers received instruction on different techniques to apprehend a gunman.

Thursday, officers in the third group, made their way to the second floor of Booth Central as gunshots echoed in the stairwell. As they headed toward the sound, a man came running out, his hands up as he was yelling, “Help me! Help me!”

The man was guided to safety and then the officers rushed the room with guns ready. A bit of hesitation was shown, however, as they were going through the classroom doorway.

“Don’t ever expect the person in front of you to go in one direction. You just go in the opposite direction of them,” Chris Garibay, ISP sergeant, said. “You’ve got to be safe, so give good directions. Let your team know what you want them to do.”

Once in the location, a man was found in the center of the room, pointing a gun at a victim lying on the ground.

“This is the hardest part for police officers. When a gun is pointed at you, you know it is immediate,” said Ron Caves, state trooper. “But when it’s pointed at someone else, it’s harder for an officer to put out shots.”

Caves emphasized to the officers that a gun pointed at someone else is just as much of a threat as though it were pointed at them.

“Our job is to protect. What’s faster, action or reaction?” he asked.
The class replied with “action” simultaneously.
 
“You’ve got a split second to make that determination. You’ve got to overwhelm the shooter,” State Trooper Brad Sprague said.

The officers went through several scenarios, including a “no-shoot” situation. In this scenario, a “coach” was able to get the gun away from the shooter, but was still holding the weapon when officers rushed into the classroom. The officers then had to assess the situation to make sure the man holding the weapon was not actually the shooter.
 
 “You still want to get him to put down the gun and move away from it,” Caves said.
Training By Choice
 
The state police do not require the local agencies to take rapid deployment training, but since the Columbine High School massacre many choose to do so, Sprague said.
 
“Before Columbine, they would secure the perimeter and wait for a tactical squad, but they could take up to an hour, especially out in this area,” he said. “Now, we teach the tactics so they are able to enter a situation with an active shooter.”
 
Morris Police Chief Brent Dite said the local police agencies are very lucky to have such a strong relationship with the state police, and when they offered to train the local officers, he jumped on the opportunity. The state policemen instructed and provided the simulation equipment with no charge to the local departments, Dite said.  
 
“Each month there always seems to be something happening somewhere, whether it is a school, church or a mall – we’re seeing more and more of these bad incidents playing out and this is the type of training we need to be prepared,” Dite said.
 
In addition, the training is a team-0building exercise for officers who are often working on their own.
 
“We’re working as a team even though we’re all from different departments,” Mark Sajnaj, Grundy County Sheriff’s police sergeant, said. “We’re all on the same wave length, so if someone comes from say the Minooka Department to help with an incident, we all have the same training to handle it.”
 
Many of the officers have never experienced such a situation outside of training, so acting out the simulation is quite the rush.
 
“You play it out in your head, but the scenarios have been different every time, so you don’t know what to expect,” Morris patrolwoman Jessica Smith said. “Your blood starts pumping and you get excited.”
 
Smith said being over excited and anxious caused her team to lack caution during the scenario with the coach recovering the gunman’s weapon.
 
“Instead of flanking like I was supposed to, I stopped because he wasn’t shooting,” Smith said. “But we don’t know who he is, so until he’s in cuffs, he’s still a threat.”