Adams Township police presents ALICE training to Mars Centennial School
ADAMS TWP — What should a middle schooler do with a thrown firearm if an armed intruder gains access to her elementary school?
This question and others were asked by fifth and sixth grade students at Mars Area Centennial School after an assembly on active shooter preparedness that took place Friday, Jan. 5.
Fifth and sixth grade students at Mars Area Centennial School formed lines in the gymnasium before being directed to sit in front of a projector. In the center of the gym, a scenario training was set up with six classroom desks and a door frame as students watched.
The school shooting protocol training, which was presented by Sgt. Edward Lenz and Officer Chris Kopas of Adams Township Police Department, comes as the country reached a record high in school shootings between 2021 and 2022, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Nearly one week into the new year, the U.S. has seen two active shooter incidents in schools. On Thursday, Jan. 4, a sixth grade student was killed and five people were wounded in a shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa.
Similar to fire prevention strategies, Lenz emphasized preparedness in the face of active shooter incidents in and outside of school.
“Do we have fire extinguishers?” Lenz asked students. “Do you think when they built the school that it’s built in such a way that it doesn’t burn? Everything, from when they start planning to build a building to when they finish it is about being safe from fire because there used to be some really bad fires … so we started to do the same thing. So, what can we do if a bad guy comes here? What can we do to try to make it safer?”
ALICE, an acronym, stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate, a nod to different approaches civilians — including students and teachers — can take depending on how a crisis unfolds.
“The worst thing you could do is nothing,” Lenz said before the assembly. “By going through this and having different options, making them think about things, hopefully when (an active shooter incident) happens, if it happens, they have an idea of what they’re already going to do.”
The police officers discussed different strategies, from taking instruction from teachers, informing others of suspicious behavior, barricading doors with found objects to evacuating when possible.
The best case scenario in an active shooting incident, they said, is evacuating.
“If you can leave, I want you to leave,” Kopas said. “You’re not going to stay behind, you’re not going to wait to see if you can be the brave person.”
If an intruder is attempting to gain access to a classroom, officers told students to crouch down to the ground with the balls of their feet on the ground to be ready to stand up or move with ease.
If evacuating is not an option — and as a last resort — students were told to fight back or distract the intruder.
“This is what we call your absolute last defense,” Kopas said. “If someone means to do you harm, every rule that your teachers, that police, that your parents have taught you — be nice, don’t bite, don’t scratch, don’t kick, don’t pull hair, don’t hit in sensitive body areas — all of that is, by my permission, thrown out the window.”
“If someone comes into this school, and they mean to do you harm to the point of either being seriously hurt or killed, I want you to fight as dirty as you possibly can, as long as countering is the last option,” he said.
At the assembly, Lenz and Kopas noted that teachers also undergo ALICE training.
In August, the school added metal detectors and updated its school safety protocols following a comprehensive evaluation of the school’s safety plan after an incident involving a firearm outside a Mars Area High School basketball game last February.
Other changes included the implementation of visitor passes issued by ID-scanning technology and bag searches.
