Correction – A correction has been made to this article to fix some minor errors and to give a better description of the run, hide, fight technique used during active shooter situations.
A film professor was openly carrying a prop gun at PCC today, and with the speed of the Long Beach Police Department, they were able to ascertain that the professor with the prop gun wasn’t a threat to campus safety.
However, this calls into question how effective the protocol is that is set in place for situations like suspected shooters on campus.
LBCC and all faculty members should be more inclusive in teaching their students what to do when an active shooter may appear.
The active shooter plan for the school is optional to learn for faculty during their professional development days.
Campus safety has been trained specifically for shooter situations and followed precautions for the incident.
Students however, don’t have the option for themselves to learn what to do in a dangerous situation, all they receive is alerts and emails when the situation is occurring.
Also, few students either got their alerts late or did not get any text alerts at all, and it was up to the faculty to inform students to stay indoors and keep them safe.
However, there were many tweets and notifications about the incident so a student could have learned of the emergency via the internet.
In the event that a student doesn’t know the best way to be safe, with proper education they would know the run, hide, fight scenario.
Run, hide and fight is a type of training that is given to people for use in an active shooter situation.
Simply put, the training dictates that you should run from a shooter if it’s an option, hide if you can’t safely run away, and fight if no other options are available.
It doesn’t have to be a dedicated training day with police on hand, it can be in flyers, or giving out little pocket cards in what to do in these situations, or even an informational event that introduces the concept of run, hide, and fight to students.
There is only so much the school can do to keep students safe, but teaching students as much as they can about what to do in these situations is more beneficial than unnecessary.
Now that LBCC has had an incident, they should be taking a closer look at how they can improve the protocol that is already in place.