BLOOMFIELD, NJ — With township schools closed this week for spring break, the entire Bloomfield Police Department, from patrol officer to deputy chief, have been practicing how to react to an active shooter at a Bloomfield school.
The drill has been held annually for about 12 years and a different district school is used each year in an effort to acquaint the police with all facilities, according to Lt. Anthony Sisco, the officer in charge of the training and a BPD SWAT team member. Beginning Monday and concluding tomorrow, it has been under way at Brookdale Elementary. Replicas of weapons were used.
Training sessions involving about 20 BPD officers have been conducted during the morning. Police personnel in any session are not placed in specific groups; for instance, all detectives in one group and patrol officers in another. Sisco said this is how it would be in the event the BPD is confronted with the real thing: The first four or five officers on the scene of a school under siege, regardless of their rank or day-to-day responsibilities, go in as a team.
“Basically, we’re practicing drills to confront an active shooter,” Sisco said at Brookdale earlier this week. “If we get a call, the first four or five guys confront the active shooter and stop the threat. The first guys in are called the ‘contact team.’ It is their responsibility to find and eliminate the active shooter.”
Nor is there a group leader to the contact team.
“In a group of four, a leader isn’t designated,” Sisco said. “It’s the officer going down the hall first.”
He said the Bloomfield police have diagrams of all Bloomfield schools, but the department may also train at Town Hall.
“I tell our officers, it can happen at any public place,” Sisco said. “It doesn’t have to be a school.”
Sisco is the commander of the BPD SWAT team. The team has nine members. Others on the team were leading the training because they had the most tactical experience.
“No one is going to remember everything,” he said. “But in a group of five, there will always be one guy who will remember something. And guys do remember. You go in and have a plan.”
In the event of an active shooter, he said the first responders would probably just have their handguns or maybe a shotgun in a patrol car.
“The active shooter would have more firepower,” he said. “They’ve planned. They come in with a rifle.”
On Tuesday, the BPD conducted drills on different floors. Except for police, the school appeared vacant.
According to Detective Mike McCracken, a SWAT team member who was instructing the officers on the first floor, training was given for moving down hallways, past open and closed doors, up and down stairwells and dealing with open exterior doors. He said the most dangerous places with an active shooter in the building are hallways and stairwells This is because in a hallway there is virtually no cover, nothing for advancing police officers to hide behind. And climbing the stairs with the shooter above them could make someone an easy target.
Instructing the officers on climbing stairs, McCracken told them to “hug the wall” of the stairwell and “don’t give the shooter, two floors up, a game-ender. And move quickly on the landing.”
On the first floor, the officers, weapons in hand, practiced ascending the stairs one at a time. McCracken was the first officer. He had a replica of an automatic weapon and stayed close to the wall, scanning the flight above him while slowly climbing the steps. He told the group that once you pass your aimed weapon over an area where you do not see anyone, do not pass it over that area again; move on.
He stopped at the top step of the staircase. Then it was time for the second officer to follow, hug the wall, scan the area with their weapon and stop behind McCracken. This proceeded until the entire group was on the steps behind McCracken and against the wall.
Now it was time to cross the landing. Staying close to the wall, McCracken went first and moved quickly around the landing to the first step of the second flight of stairs and stopped. He scanned the area above him, passing his weapon over what he saw. Slowly he moved up the stairs to the top step, not taking his eyes or weapon away from the floor above him. His “students” followed one by one.
Once the drills on each floor were concluded, at a designated time all the officers came to the first floor and took seats in a classroom. Now it was time to practice with shooters. A team of five officers left the school through a back door and waited. Two other officers stepped forward. They were the shooters. One ran up to the third floor. The other hid in the first floor hallway near the stairwell the police would climb after entering the school. At the signal to begin the drill, the officers entered the building. The shooter in hiding ran past them and up the stairs. A shot was fired from a starter’s pistol being used by another officer. This was to indicate a shot from an active shooter. Once the shooter ran up the stairs, the police entered the building and carefully followed in pursuit.
Bloomfield Public Safety Director Sam DeMaio said the importance of BPD officers being prepared to deal with an active shooter situation cannot be stressed enough.
“This training not only familiarizes them with the school floor plans, but trains them to work in sync with our SWAT team,” he said in an email to this newspaper. “I look forward to taking these training drills to the next level by training alongside teachers and students. We all need to be prepared and know exactly what to do if an unfortunate incident took place. Being trained and prepared saves lives.”
Sisco places the same importance on active shooter training.
“We hope and pray it never happens,” he said, “but we have to prepare for everything. The training has to be done and everyone, from officer to deputy chief, has to be trained.”
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