‘Active Shooter’ Exercise Comes to Mass Maritime

Cape Cod Times

Don't freak out, but there will be a "mass casualty event" this Friday with more than a dozen dead and 20 injured.

This is not a threat or April Fools' joke. It's an "active shooter" exercise that more than 100 school and public safety officials will face in the athletic center at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay.

"This is a tabletop exercise, discussion-based. We don't put any real assets in place. We're not deploying the SWAT team," explained Ryan Winmill, who runs The Winmill Group, a security firm.

Winmill, who works in Washington, D.C., but is a part-time Cotuit resident, has lots of experience as a security consultant, usually involving high-profile clients. His firm created security exercises for the presidential inauguration, the Democratic National Convention in Boston, the G-8 Summit and, most recently, the 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star game.

Besides his security experience, Winmill has lots of connections and a desire to "give back." That's why he is facilitating the exercise pro bono. Among those who will be at the table are Rep. William Keating, D-Mass.; Carlo Boccia, an Eastham resident and the former homeland security director for Boston; Barnstable Police Chief Paul MacDonald; and Barnstable schools Superintendent Mary Czajkowski. Barnstable officials are prime participants because Barnstable High School will be "under attack" in the exercise.

There will be 13 local, state and federal agencies in the house, including representatives from the Massachusetts State Police, the FBI, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, the office of the Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office and the Hyannis Fire Department.

"We'll have the room laid out, working off multiple screens with maps and a timeline, as if it is happening in real time," Winmill told me.

The exercise will be broken up into three phases. First, a "pre-incident event" will use realistic details about hypothetical "suspicious activity." After that, they'll confront the incident itself: a hypothetical gunman entering Barnstable High School. Last is recovery and aftermath.

"This issue is a lot more complex than just sending in the SWAT team," Winmill said. "It involves public information, the media, concerned parents flocking to the scene, PTSD for first responders, faculty and students. And then, there's the investigation itself. Who's in charge?"

This is a first-of-its-kind collaboration that involves "throwing everything at them so they can have a dialogue and more importantly understand the roles of different agencies and peers," Winmill said.

Barnstable High School is at the center of the exercise not because it has a violence problem but because, from a security perspective, it's the biggest, most challenging high school, both Winmill and Czajkowksi said.

I happen to have been reading Annette Fuentes' "Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse." It provides a wealth of historical context on "school violence" and details what has happened in schools across the country in the decades since "zero tolerance" and other obsessively punitive policies were first championed by alarmist sociologists in the 1980s, predicting a generation of "super predators" who never emerged.

I know we live in a post-Newtown world where "mass casualty events" can and do happen. But, I also know some of the half-baked ideas we've heard in the wake of Sandy Hook — arming teachers and turning schools into militarized zones — will only undermine the kind of learning environment kids need.

"What it really comes down to is striking a balance between really providing the most safety and maintaining an environment for learning," Winmill said.

For Czajkowski, this is new territory, but an experience she didn't want to miss. "If you don't have a safe place to learn and teach, then what's the point? This is preventive and proactive. ... In this day and age, you can't be blind to these issues and say it won't happen," she said.

And Keating told me that as a former prosecutor, he's been involved with these types of exercises before, so he appreciates their importance. But, he said, it's also important to talk about ways to improve safety without detracting from the primary purpose of schools.

"You want an environment free for education, not making it seem like you are going into a fortress to learn," he said. "When I was younger, they were talking about bomb shelters. I honestly lost sleep over that for a period in my life. Hopefully, that (fear) will be included in the conversation."

We should be glad they're exercising like this. But we should also hope they don't forget that turning schools into armed camps isn't smart either.