Large law enforcement turnout for Rutherford County Schools active shooter simulation
The exercise involved a significant law enforcement presence and temporarily closed some roads in the area.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - On Monday at Siegel High School, Rutherford County Schools (RCS) and area law enforcement agencies partnered to conduct a large-scale active shooter simulation ahead of the first day of school.
According to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office (RCSO), the goal of the simulation was to create a realistic active shooter scenario.
Student actors and teachers were acting as parents. The exercise included the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, Rutherford County Emergency Management, Murfreesboro Police, Murfreesboro Fire, Middle Tennessee State University Police, Tennessee Highway Patrol, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, among others.
Before the drill started, school administrators spent the morning in classrooms with law enforcement and emergency management officials. Inside the school, student actors and teachers playing the roles of parents participated in the training.
James Evans, RCS Public Information Officer, said fortunately, the district has never experienced an actual active shooter situation. RCSO Public Information Officer Lisa Marchesoni said these types of drills are important.
“This is to review their skills in what they’ve learned and to put into practice for response, in case we ever have to do this, and hopefully we never will,” Marchesoni said. “We have trained together for many years, and we just want to test our system today to see how well we are trained to find the deficiencies and correct them, in case anything ever does happen.”
Rutherford County Sheriff Mike Fitzhugh said that while the county has conducted many training sessions in the past, none have matched the scale of Monday’s simulation.
“It gives you more of a flavor of the chaos that’s going to go on around you,” he said, “and that’s what we want to try to create, is you encounter it, deal with it, make sure you know what you’re doing.”
In total, over 500 people from the district and law enforcement participated in the simulation. The sheriff said today’s response time was faster than previous exercises. Evans said in the future, the district hopes to improve the speed at which initial messages are communicated to parents during emergencies.
The first day of school in Rutherford County is Wednesday, with a partial day scheduled. The first full day of school will be on Thursday.
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