St. Augustine colleges have procedures to react to incidents like at FSU
With Thursday morning's shooting at the library of Florida State University hitting so close to home, security personnel from local campuses say they have procedures set in case of an incident like the one in Tallahassee.
Both St. Johns River State College and Flagler College have campuses in St. Augustine, and security personnel have made both trespasser and open shooter procedures a priority because of the increasing number of school shootings in the last year.
"We have completely revised our emergency operations plan to include specific scenarios of trespassers and active shooters on campus," said David Stout, director of campus security at SJRSC. "All common places such as classrooms and fields are equipped with an emergency speaker system that allows us to immediately communicate with staff and students."
According to Stout, faculty and staff are trained to handle certain emergency procedures, and those procedures are standard throughout the three SJRSC campuses.
"It's the faculty's responsibility to put the security measures into action," he said. "That allows the security personnel to respond to the emergency."
SJRSC also is contracted with a third party that sends out emergency calls, texts and emails to communicate to people outside the campus to let them know that there is an emergency on campus.
"It warns people coming to the campus for any reason to stay away," Stout said.
Stout also said they have to work closely with local law enforcement agencies.
"We have an excellent relationship with the local law enforcement," he said. "We have speciality teams that patrol each of the campuses."
In an event like the shooting at FSU, Stout said that the most important action they would take is to inform the campus body of the emergency and ensure their safety.
"The first and foremost concern in those initial few seconds is to communicate with the campus body, both students and faculty, that there is an emergency on campus," he said.
According to Stout, as the announcement is being made, campus security are the first to respond to the emergency.
"Campus security can be on location within 45 seconds to a minute," he said.
As information is being gathered, local law enforcement is contacted for backup.
At Flagler College, the St. Augustine Police Department works closely with the Office of Safety and Security to ensure student safety.
William Abare, president of Flagler College, said that he is pleased that Flagler College has a contract with the St. Augustine Police Department.
In July, the police department hosted an active shooter training session in the hallways of the Florida East Coast Railway resident halls that trained officers how to respond to active shooter situations.
Kerry Davis, director of security, said the training allows for a cohesive and standard plan in the case of an active shooter emergency.
"It gives officers the ability to get to the scene, have everyone be on the same page and implement a plan of action as soon as they get there," he said. "Eventually, we want to do this same type of exercise in other buildings around campus, so officers can get training in different scenarios."
Mark Samson, a spokesman for the St. Augustine Police Department, said the session was an effort to practice various scenarios so that responders know how to handle situations.
"It's reinforcing what officers already know how to do, but the more we practice these things, the more it becomes the norm for us," he said.
Samson said that the standard protocol for an invader or active shooter is for one team to respond to a call.
"Their job is to go after the shooter," he said. "As more information is gathered, a second team will come in to get people out of the building and secure the area."
However, despite the training and procedures, Abare said that no amount of preparation can prepare a school for a tragedy like the one at FSU.
"The unfortunate reality is that no institution can claim they are immune to random acts of unprovoked violence."