Police conduct active-shooter drill at Sunnyslope Elementary School

The crack of an AK-47 was punctuated by the panicked screams of kids as they rushed out of a classroom past a dead student lying in a pool of blood.

Fortunately, it was all make-believe, including the dark red blood and the assault rifle held by the pretend teenage killer, as the Hollister Police Department conducted an active-shooter drill Monday, June 20, at Sunnyslope Elementary School.

Hollister police officer Carlos Rodriguez was in charge of the drill, instructing fellow officers and police explorers playing both victim and terrified students. Rodriguez, who has been with the department nine years, also fills the roles of range master, school resource officer and active-shooter instructor.

“The main thing we’re doing today is active-shooter response training for all of our officers,” he said. “As school resource officer and an active-shooter instructor, I’ve been working with the schools, giving them the training they need on how to respond to that type of a threat on their end. Today, it’s with my officers and bringing those two ends together so the schools and the police department can respond to an active threat as a team instead of two individual entities.”

In working with the area schools, Rodriguez said he covered scenarios in Hollister that have resulted in lockdowns.

“What the police department would like to see the schools do to better help the police respond to that type of threat,” he said. “So far, it’s worked out really well. I believe the schools had two lockdowns so far this year after that training and in both instances the schools reacted perfectly.”

The training for the schools involves an hour-long classroom training about different kinds of threats and what the campuses can expect from in the way of reaction from the police. This was followed by lockdown drills.

“Today is for the officers and we’re going to have our police explorers being role players, hoping to provide a sensory overload for the officers as they respond to people screaming, and there’s going to be people laying down asking for help,” he said, “and the officers are going to have to focus, find the threat and end it.”

Rodriguez said there would be active threats, as well as threats that begin as active and then stop halfway through and the officers have to change their tactics.

“If the treat begins as active and then it seems to stop it could mean the suspect might have committed suicide or the suspect is lying in wait for the officers,” he said. “They have to be able to adapt their response to a given situation.”

The officers went through five or six different scenarios over the next few hours.

“The officers will start outdoors and be given the basic scenario information, they’re going to have to use different movement techniques to go toward the sound of gunfire,” Rodriguez said. “They’re going to find the classroom and use the tactics they learned this morning to make entry. They’ll be presented with different variations of the threat and have to deal with it.”

Rodriguez said his qualifications for conducting the drill include his experience as the school resource officer, which gives him familiarity with the school campus, the students and possible active-shooter threat scenarios. He is a certified active-shooter instructor and range officer.

He wanted residents to know that the police officers are out in the heat putting in a lot of hard work to face a threat they hope never happens.

“But if it ever does, they can know that any two officers, from our newest rookie to most seasoned veteran, will be able to come together and be able to approach that threat and be able to analyze it as a cohesive unit instead of just two individuals,” he said.

Rodriguez said everything changed after the massacre at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999, when two students murdered 13 people, while wounding another 20. The mode of response before then was to wait for the arrival of S.W.A.T. before rushing into harm’s way. There’s no longer any waiting.

“As patrol officers we realize we’re not S.W.A.T., and we realize we’re not Special Forces,” he emphasized. “But we know for sure, if we like it or not, we’re going to be the first ones to the fight, so the purpose of the training today is to give my officers the tools to meet that threat and have a positive effect on a situation like that.”

Rodriguez said that while there has not been an active-shooter incident at a school in Hollister, there have been enough situations near schools to warrant concern.

“We’ve had plenty of incidences where an officer begins chasing a suspect and many times the suspect has gotten very close to coming on the campus,” he said. “We hope that a Columbine or Orlando situation doesn’t happen at the schools, but there’s also the smaller incidents that can start in the city and bleed onto the campus.”

One of the police explorers taking part in the drill was Mindy Perla, 20, who said she hopes one day to be a police officer. She played both a dead victim and a terrified student. Perla is about to complete her studies at Gavilan Community College, where she’s studying criminal justice. She said she volunteered to take part in the drill in order to better understand law enforcement.

“We get to do a little bit of everything, like go on ride-alongs and write reports,” Perla said. “I want to learn everything a police officer does. The active-shooter drill shows what happens when an officer shows up at the scene.”