The Montage Student Newspaper

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M T H E M O N TA G E

Are we in the crosshairs?

DORIAN ROBERTS STAFF WRITER In the shadow of the recent Sandy Hook shooting, students in America must once again reassess their feelings regarding safety at school. But Meramec students need not worry according to Campus Chief of Police Paul Banta. Banta said the officers on campus are trained for a situation involving an intruder on campus. “We are prepared as we can be for an armed intruder,” Banta said. “We attended the A.L.I.C.E. (Alert-LockdownInform-Counter-Evacuate) training which was put on by the St. Louis County S.W.A.T. team. It’s training for students and faculty on how to protect themselves in a situation where there is a intruder on campus.” Meramec is armed with nine full time officers in the college’s employ, each trained and armed with semiautomatic weapons, tactical bulletproof vests and shields. Three officers are always on duty on-campus to ensure the safety of students and the campus is equipped with cameras, which stand constantly on guard for suspicious activity. “We’re prepared as much as we can be prepared, but if someone is coming on this campus willing to lose their life trying to shoot other people it’s difficult to stop that from happening,” Banta said. “We’re taking all the precautions we can take.” Vice President of Student Affairs Linden Crawford said the Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT) are proactive in the pursuit to prevent incidents from occurring on campus. “All students see a video in their classrooms which include a brief active shooter scenario, and I think from our perspective we would like to expand on that a little bit,” @themontage

Voume 48 Issue 10

Crawford said. “As far as prevention, the other thing I would say is in looking at current students or students that cause disruptions on campus. We are very active proactive with our Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT) on campus.” Banta said the campus police would be in control of an active shooter situation until they can hand the situation off to the local police department. “If we have an active shooter on campus we will be mitigating the situation until we can turn it over to the S.W.A.T. team,” Banta said. “If somebody is here and they’re actively shooting people my men are going to go and take them out.” Banta added the campus police prepare through training programs and drilling. “We just did an active shooter drill with the Kirkwood Police Department and the entire police department across the district,” Banta said. Banta said the “tools” include a pop-up alert system on all campus computers, a text alert system and several other warning systems to better divert students from danger. “There are numerous tools in place to alert students,” Banta said. “If there is an intruder, we can quickly inform everyone on campus.” Crawford said the schools takes counter-measures everyday to prevent a problem before it happens. “We are actively involved in an Internet based prevention. You may submit a review anonymously if need be,” Crawford said.

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Story continued on page 3 February 21, 2013

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