A Maroon Alert dinged across the phones of students, faculty and staff on the Mississippi State University campus. There was an active shooter near Carpenter Hall.
A supposed threat that proved to be a false alarm ended up being a very real drill for the MSU Police Department and other responding agencies in August 2015. It showed unequivocally how prepared the agencies were to work together and respond to the chaos on campus.
MSU Police Department Chief Vance Rice had only been on the job for a year when the call came in, and his team sprung to action.
“My officers did outstanding,” Rice said. “We had a group quickly form up, and they were entering the building within seconds, or a minute at the most. Of course immediately, we were going, ‘Something’s not right. There’s no bodies. There’s no shooting.’ We started slowing down because we knew that this was not right.”
Because Rice said MSUPD works closely with local law enforcement agencies such as Starkville Police Department, Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office and Mississippi Highway Patrol, there was cohesion among area law enforcement responding. More chaos began when agencies outside the area came to the scene with no knowledge of how MSUPD was responding to the situation or how to communicate with those in charge, despite a command center being set up on the Drill Field.
“We still had officers from all over pouring into campus, and we didn’t have any communication with any of them,” Rice said. “They weren’t switching to unified channels, and we didn’t even know who they were to get to their channel to tell them to slow down. It was chaos.
Ultimately, it will be again. … Starkville (PD) was here and we had communication with Starkville and they actually responded to a couple of other issues that day for us, which was a big help because we were kind of busy.”
Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District’s chief school resource officer Sammy Shumaker remembers that day in the local public schools well. Shumaker said SOCSD schools went on lockdown, but a lot of panic from those in the school came from misinformation on social media.
Many SOCSD students, staff and faculty members had family and friends on campus when the entire county went on alert, and misinformation spread quickly primarily across Twitter and Facebook.
“One thing we learned that day is that social media is not our friend when things like that happen,” Shumaker said. “We had students whose parents and relatives worked at MSU who were posting on social media incorrect information. I was in direct contact with 911 through the whole process, and we knew everything that was happening. We had students who were panicking because they were getting incorrect information through social media. … We had to fight that to try to keep calm.”
SOCSD Public Information Officer Nicole Thomas said it is important to only look at official channels for accurate information during a crisis such as the one that occurred in August 2015.
“That was our first real push on official social media and what channels to turn to for correct information,” Thomas said.
Since the situation in 2015, MSUPD and MSU have hired school safety officers, who are unarmed and non-certified personnel to go around campus to make sure buildings are secure and who will help man a command center should an active shooter situation arise. Each police car is also equipped with updated breaching tools and medical kits which include tourniquets.
Rice said the No. 1 thing additional responding officers, whether from inside the immediate responding agency or from outside, should know from training is that if they are going to an active shooter scene, they need to report to the command post first.
Rice tells his commanding officers to help decrease chaos by designating someone to stay outside and direct other responding officers, if possible.
“I tell my commanders to have someone outside to direct additional responding officers that are coming after the fact,” Rice said. “Don’t just have other officers running into a building so they know and have an idea of where the issue is. That’s got to be done at the scene. We’ve seen it, and it won’t work at a rally point (not on scene).”
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