Sirens blared, smoke hovered in the air and Hillsborough Township Police officers took action during an active shooter drill at Auten Road Intermediate School on July 18.
Issued by Hillsborough Police Chief Darren Powell and led by officer Ted Lewis, the drill had students from the Somerset County Police Academy Youth Week acting as injured students. Over the course of the exercise, they laid sprawled out in the hallways wearing tags around their neck depicting their “injuries” — gunshot wound to the chest, head injury from fall, deceased, semi-conscious and so on.
“We know this is fake, but we’re treating it as if it’s real,” Lewis said, addressing the students and school employees present.
The drill was comprised of two scenarios, one with a single gunman and the other with two. The men walked the hallways — firearms loaded with blank rounds in hand — sending the sound of gunshots throughout the building.
In the first scenario, the single gunman committed suicide while in the second, one gunman was shot and the other was taken into custody by officers.
With guns drawn, officers made their way into classrooms looking for remaining victims or other possible gunmen. A handful of teachers participated in the drill, with each assigned a group of Youth Week students and remained in classrooms while the drill was in progress, and some teachers volunteered to dial 9-1-1.
Once cleared by police, members of Robert Wood Johnson EMS worked on stabilizing victims, treating their wounds and taking them to safety outside of the building.
The drill was continued until everyone was safely evacuated from the building.
According to Gun Violence Archive, there have been 184 reported and verified mass shootings in the United States so far in 2018, with the Santa Fe High School shooting among the most recent. For Auten Road Intermediate School Principal Christopher Carey, drills like this are crucial.
“This anticipates the need for communication and the need to be organized and prepared for really anything,” he said. “For the teachers here today, we are able to take some real life examples to speak about. A lot of times we talk about fictitious scenarios, but this is as close as we could get, thankfully. It gets your emotions and every sense of your body involved.”
Carey added that active shooter drills allow administrative employees and those involved to share how they felt in the moment, resulting in them being more prepared in the future.
One of the participating students, Sabrina Eilers, 15, of Hillsborough, called the experience “scary,” but said it gave her a better understanding of what could happen.
“I came away with a lot more knowledge about how you need to be precise in everything that you do when it comes to these situations,” she said.
Lewis spoke again with employees and Youth Week students once the drills were completed, declaring them a “success” and applauding the communication skills exhibited among the officers and school staff. He also answered any questions about protocol that should be taken during a real-life scenario.
“If I hear gunshots coming from the front door, I’m evacuating out that back door,” he said, pointing to the back door of the cafeteria.
For Carey, the drill has opened the door for future discussions about school safety.
“I think that this is a help for us, but we’re very proactive as a school and as a district to continuously revisit our policies and procedures,” he said. “This is going to influence that.”