How could the time be reduced? School Resource Officer or armed staff, that's how. Every time this stuff happens we see police all togged out in war gear. I'm ecstatic to see a patrol officer in normal dress with a rifle, or in plainclothes which we saw one of. But when I see the dressed up and waiting team, I know they got dressed first. And there were plenty of waiters at VA Tech were there not? Not all the blame is to the police. Response plans? Why does every cop in town not have the means whether hard or electronic key to open the school I know some people have zero use for cops and while I'm not there, my number is low. I'd much rather have a cop in my town guarding a few hundred kids than writing parking tickets.
Back on the time, you don't clear the school, you head towards the gunshots. Quickly. If we all do this, eventually first responder will shoot first responder, first responder will lose vs. gunman, etc. and then we can all have a great bloddy newsday, but the overall toll and the perverse incentive to carry out mass shootings will be much lower.
I worked campus security for my university for 3 years, as a shift supervisor for 2 of them.
Our university was not going to just give out keys to our buildings, our datacenters, our scientific equipment, our students' living quarters, and so on, to every cop on payroll in the city of Tacoma.
Our security staff had access to every door in the University, no exceptions, and it took a key ring with about 35-40 keys on it to accomplish the job. There was no "master" key.
Our security office had a trap on any "911" call placed on campus from one of our phones. It still went to TPD, but a computer in our office instantly alerted us to the exact location of it and our dispatcher and shift supervisor both had live TPD radios and callsigns on police band (Tacoma North) to coordinate necessary response to whatever was going on. Typically that was just handing over the appropriate master key for that building in the event of forceful police presence being necessary, or we would arrive about 3-5 minutes before EMS in the event of an OD/alcohol poisoning/attempted suicide (yuck) call and one team would begin first aid while the other team guided EMS to the victim.
We had no trap on cell-based "911" calls and had to monitor the police scanner in the event there was a 911 call place on a non-university line that was dispatched to the university. TPD dispatch would call us and alert us as part of their response in those cases, to coordinate access and get someone on scene ASAP.
That's just one small university with less than 3000 students.
Now add to that every public K-12 institution and any other colleges, from community colleges to trade schools to shopping malls to mega-state universities.
That's a lot of access to coordinate for 1 police department. There's no way they could have all those keys lined up. They have to work with whatever assets are on the site to gain access.
