Do school Lockdown drills keep our children safe? Part 1

Yes and no.  Yes, Lockdown drills can be effective if they are employed as just one aspect of a multi-option comprehensive school active shooter training and response plan.  However, if a school simply conducts a few lockdown-only drills a year and provides no other training to their students then the answer is a definite no.  If this sounds like your child’s school, your school officials are not doing everything they can to ensure the safety of its students.  In fact, the lockdown-only approach may be doing more harm than good.  For those who don’t know, this is what staff and students are usually taught to do in a lockdown:

 ·       Lock the classroom door

·       Turn off the lights

·       Shut the blinds

·       Get down on the ground and hide in a corner

·       Don’t move or speak

 In essence, the strategy of using Lockdown-only to counter an active shooter relies solely on the hope that all doors can be locked before the attacker can shoot anyone and that the locked doors cannot be breached.  However, it is incredibly unrealistic to think school personnel can quickly identify an active shooter in the building, call for a lockdown, have all school personnel hear the Lockdown call/perform their required duties, and lock all doors before the attacker is able to shoot anyone.  While Lockdown can definitely help protect staff and students in another part of the school, it does nothing to help those in the immediate vicinity of the shooter.  For example, many mass shootings have occurred at schools that employed Lockdown, but school personnel weren’t able to lock all the doors in time to impede access by the shooter.  We have also seen high profile school shootings (Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT, and the recent Nashville school shooting) where shooters breached locked exterior doors.  Furthermore, even if a school manages to lock all classroom doors before the suspect is able to shoot anyone, is it really that hard to breach a locked door?  As someone who has breached locked doors before, I can tell you it is often a lot easier than it looks.  And it could even be easier at a school since most doors are all or partial glass, and thus especially vulnerable to an attacker armed with a firearm.

 Another problem with the Lockdown-only approach is students will not be trained on what to do if the classroom door isn’t locked in time or the door is breached and the shooter does in fact enter their classroom.  In a stressful situation, you don’t have the ability to do critical thinking and will instead revert to your training.  If you have no training at all, you may freeze or possibly make poor decisions.  If you do have training, your muscle memory will hopefully kick in and you will instinctively follow your training.  Unfortunately, if you have been provided poor training you will most likely make poor decisions.  For example, since Lockdown-only training teaches students only to hide as a response to an active shooter, that is what many individuals will do even if it doesn’t make sense in their particular situation.  If the shooter has already gotten inside the classroom, then does continuing to cower in the corner of the room make any sense?  Of course not, but since students were not trained to Run or Fight they will continue to “hide” and unfortunately may become easy victims.

 To be clear, Lockdown can be effective as the first line of defense, but schools still need to provide students and staff additional response options when/if Lockdown fails.  Furthermore, Lockdown-only training is fear based and teaches students to be victims.  On the other hand, multi-option training is empowering and teaches everyone to be survivors.  We owe it to our next generation to teach them to be survivors and not victims.

Stay tuned for Part 2 next week where I will discuss research studies related to Lockdown…