Reason.com Increasingly theatrical and frightening active shooter drills are surprisingly common, even though school shootings are not.
Billy Binion | 10.2.2019 6:10 PM
Police officers outside of Dayton, Ohio, unsheathed their weapons and fired blanks in Franklin High School on Tuesday as part of a misguided effort to prepare students for a possible active shooter.
The planned drill unnecessarily ratcheted up the intensity of school lockdown procedures, which routinely require students and teachers to barricade themselves in their classrooms. That the exercise was potentially traumatizing was not lost on the officials who planned it, as they came equipped with “Social-Emotional Activities,” as well as counselors who could talk with any disturbed teens.
“There was a concern and it did cause some stress” among parents and students, Lt. Gerry Massey tells the Cincinnati Enquirer. Senior Samantha Earnhart, one such terrified student, said that she “became very emotional” and “started to cry” upon hearing the gunfire.
And for what? Regardless of the feverish rhetoric around school shootings, the phenomenon remains exceedingly rare.
Less rare, however, are these increasingly extreme active shooter drills.