The call came in shortly after 1:30 p.m. A man wearing dark clothing and a toboggan entered Minton Hall and fired upon a professor and a group of students.
UCA police officers entered the building three minutes later and found mass casualties and several students injured. After a sweep of the building, police located the shooter in another room on the second floor. He had shot himself.
Police officers and emergency personnel then helped the injured students out of the building, while criminal investigators questioned witnesses.
This scenario was played out March 11 during an exercise to test the university’s police response to an active shooter on campus.
About 60 students and more than 30 emergency personnel from Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management, Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office, Conway Police Department, Conway Fire Department, Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, and MEMS were involved.
Also assisting emergency personnel were staff from UCA’s Student Health Clinic, who established a hospital-like triage center to manage the treatment of those injured.
UCA officers have put hundreds of hours into training and drilling their response to an active shooter scenario, said UCA Police Chief Larry James.
“The exercise provided them an opportunity to apply their training and knowledge, and focus on their objectives, while surrounded by the chaos and life-threatening distractions of the panic that immediately follows a shooting of this nature,” he said.
The goals of the exercise were:
- Emergency Public Safety and Security: Demonstrate the ability of police department personnel to establish and maintain security, neutralize a threat, establish incident command, coordinate with responding agencies, and effectively communicate in accordance with the emergency operations plans, and standard operating procedures of UCA Police Department.
- Public Information: Access the ability of the UCA Police to develop, coordinate and disseminate public information during an emergency in accordance with university policy.
- Communications and Warning Systems: Demonstrate the ability of the UCA police and response personnel to activate and maintain both internal and external communications during an active shooter incident in accordance with the university’s emergency operations plan, standard operating procedures and National Incident Management System.
- Incident Command and Onsite Incident Management: Assess the ability of senior responding officer to establish and maintain Incident Command during mass casualty incidents in accordance with the university’s emergency operations plan, standard operating procedures and National Incident Management System.
- Mass Casualty Response: Coordinate medical management, triage, and evacuation. Assess the ability of response personnel to coordinate victim triage, evacuation, and transport during a mass casualty incident.
The department was evaluated by subject-matter experts in various areas including the response of patrol officers and other first-responders, interoperability and coordination between responding agencies, investigation of the incident, emergency communications, and coordination of news releases, public information, and press conferences.
UCA police will take the lessons learned and modify policies and protocols, James said.
“We have, over time, established excellent policies, procedures and protocols for responding to a wide range of critical incidents. We work with and have a strong respect for the departments on campus who are called on to serve in support of planning for, responding to, and recovery from critical incidents, such as Physical Plant, Housing, and the Student Health Clinic to name a few,” he said. “But plans, policies and working relationships are not enough to ensure that an emergency can be handled effectively. Plans and policies must be practiced, under realistic conditions, to properly address variables that often go unaddressed in written documents. And good working relationships must transition to effective and integrated relationships during a crisis.”
The exercise went extremely well considering the short timeframe for planning, said James.
“It was clear to me the professionalism and skill exhibited by our officers and communications staff and by the delivery of emergency services by all of our supporting agencies,” he said.
UCA departments assisting in the exercise included UCA President’s executive staff, student services, student housing, student health, counseling services, journalism, theatre/drama, nursing, and physical plant.
Arkansas Tech University’s Emergency Management Department and Harding University’s Physician Assistant Studies were instrumental in the planning of the exercise.
There will be a large-scale exercise planned for each academic year. The department’s goals will be exercise its response, rescue and recovery abilities, not only at the department level but on a university-wide level, when faced with a crisis.
The next exercise will focus on a tornado that rips through a part of the campus and impacts much of the city.
“In this scenario the university community will have to ‘take care of ourselves’ because outside emergency responders will be spread thin,” James said.