CLARKSVILLE - In an instant, gunshots rang out from a classroom, followed by the sound of someone crying. The assistant principal drew his pistol and entered the hallway to see four children lying on the ground.
Even though he knew it was a training exercise, Cheyne Dougan said his heart was racing.
Dougan ran along a hallway to a classroom and looked in to see one child pointing a pistol at the temple of another child. Dougan fired several shots at the child gunman, an actor.
“When you hear a gunshot, your adrenaline starts pumping,” said Dougan, who works at Clarksville HighSchool. “When you hear shots go off, that means people are dying.”
Dougan is one of about 20 Clarksville School District staff members training this summer to be armed security guards on campus. Each of the district’s five campuses will have armed staff members this fall trained to respond if a gunman targets a school, as they have in mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Columbine High School in Colorado and Virginia Tech University, Superintendent David Hopkins said.
Some of the district’s principals, teachers, janitors and others will be carrying concealed pistols, he said.
A perpetrator, he explained, can kill numerouspeople within five minutes, often before police can arrive.
“The solution is you’ve got to respond in seconds,” he said.
In training, Dougan has learned not to look at faces, but at hands, and to react quickly.
In Dougan’s first runthrough in Thursday’s training, he shot the child holding the gun - as he was trained to do - but he also wounded the wrist of the child’s hostage. During his second runthrough, Dougan - firing round plastic pellets - hit only the gunman.
One of Dougan’s instructors critiqued him and pointed out that a student shot in the wrist would live.
Instructor Robert Sanchez, who is a sergeant at the Springdale Police Department, told the school employees training Thursday that their objective is to determine whether a person is a threat. He said a threat is someone with a gun in his hand.
“If I do see a weapon, engage,” Sanchez said. “If I don’t see a weapon, I’m continuing on to the sound of gunfire.”
During one exercise, none of the actors held weapons, so the trainees had to discern that and withhold gunfire.
One trainee shot at an unarmed bystander, hitting him. Sanchez pointed out that it was an easy mistake to make because the bystander had posed as the gunman in a previous exercise.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Sanchez told the trainee. “I know it’s disturbing. That’s why you’re here.”
COMING UP WITH A PLAN
Shortly after December’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut killed 20 first-graders and six adults, Hopkins began talking with his administrative team and School Board about campus security. Parents, grandparents and community members stopped by his office to ask how teachers would respond to a gunman.
“Locking the door and hiding and hoping for the best is not a plan,” Hopkins said.
Gary Pruett, a grandfather of two children who attend Clarksville schools, said he feels that his grandchildren will be safer at school with some staff members there carrying concealed guns, especially since the staff members have undergone training.
Law-abiding citizens will pay attention to gun-free signs posted at schools, Pruett said.
“That does not stop thebad people from carrying guns,” he said. “The good people can’t defend themselves. I’m all for people being able to carry their guns and defend themselves.”
Ken Trump, who consults with schools across the country on security matters, disagrees with districts arming school staff members. He said it’s not enough for educators to train on how to handle a holster and shoot a firearm. Educators are being asked to carry out a public-safety function that is typically law enforcement’s.
“Many educators wonder if they’re going to survive lunch duty or bus duty,” Trump said. “Every time a police officer has a traffic stop or other confrontational encounter, they have been trained and are of the mind-set that could be their last encounter if they don’t take tactical measures.”
If school officials are so concerned about a threat that they want more people armed on campuses, they need to make it a priority in their budgets to hire certified law-enforcement officers, he said.
Richard Abernathy, executive director of the ArkansasAssociation of Educational Administrators, said he’s aware that some districts in Arkansas are considering arming staff members.
“Clarksville is leading the way on this issue as schools all across the nation are trying to find ways to protect their children. Hopefully their security guards will never be needed, but you never know,” he said. “Each community should have those safety conversations and implement the best security plan they can for their children.”
Hopkins went through training in the spring to become a commissioned security guard. Then, the Clarksville School Board in May passed a policy that gave the superintendent authority to create and maintain an emergency-response team of armed guards.
Arkansas State Police records show that 13 school districts have gone through the process to become licensed to hire armed security guards, spokesman Bill Sadler said.
Clarksville district employees volunteer for the emergency-response team and agree to undergo background checks, psychologicaltesting and random drug-testing, Hopkins said. They receive a one-time $1,100 stipend to purchase a 9mm pistol and related equipment.
The district declined Thursday to identify most of the response-team members or reveal the exact number of those involved, a secret intended to dissuade any potential gunman.
Each team member must complete more than 50 hours of training, much more than the state minimum of 10 hours for a security guard, Hopkins said. District employees must show a high level of proficiency to become security guards, and some employees who entered the program did not make the cut.
The district will spend about $50,000 on the stipends and training, which is about what it would have spent on a second armed school resource officer, Hopkins said.
LEARNING THE ROPES
Hopkins hired Nighthawk Custom Training Academy,based in Centerton, to conduct the training.
Academy owner Jon Hodoway has trained law-enforcement officers in the use of weapons since 1999. He worked for other organizations before opening his business three years ago.
At the Clarksville School District, he said, he was asked to teach weapon skills to a group of highly motivated people, many of whom have advanced academic degrees..
While some of the larger law-enforcement agencies in the state require officers to have college degrees, the average police officer in Arkansas has a high school education, Hodoway said.
He began the educators’ training with the basics of handling a firearm and shooting at fixed targets, he said. His trainees have since learned to shoot while moving, kneeling, with one hand, in low light and at multiple targets. One part of their training involves shooting 50 rounds at a target that’ssmaller than law-enforcement officials are required to hit during training. The training is similar to what law-enforcement officers receive, Hopkins said, but has a more narrow focus.
The preliminary training in firearms preceded Thursday’s “force on force” shooting, where actors in some exercises could shoot back, Hodoway said. The exercises help gauge team members’ firearms skills and judgment as to when to shoot, Hodoway said.
During the training, trainees experience some of the same anxiety and stress they would if they had to confront a real gunman, he said.
Hopkins said he wonders what would have happened at Sandy Hook if the school had some staff members trained and equipped to respond to the gunman until police arrived.
“Terrible things happen in a matter of seconds, not minutes,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/12/2013