GRPD drills have occurred at seven SCSD #2 schools in recent months

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Photo credit to the Green River Police Department Facebook page

City of Green River Press Release

(October 30, 2020) — The Green River Police Department, in conjunction with the schools, has held several drills over the past two months, and the consensus, “it’s a great working relationship that is and will keep our kids safe,” said Supt. Of Schools Craig Berringer.

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Drills have been conducted at all seven schools in the district (Sweetwater County School District #2). The drills, which do not take long, involve lockdowns, holds, lockout, and secure. Chief of Police Tom Jarvie echos School Resource Officer Kent Hemphill in saying, “we fight how we train and if/when a major incident goes down, chaos is going to break out.” Jarvie says, “if we prepare ourselves, school administration, and students now, everyone is going to act accordingly when it comes down to a real event.” The Chief says Hemphill and SRO Jason Forsgren have put together the program for the drills.

Forsgren, the school resource officer at Lincoln School, says there are four bullet points to the drills.

  1. Improves procedural consistency between schools, which benefits the elementary students as they advance through to Junior High and High School.
  2. Coordinated response with dispatch and PD for quicker information relay and response times. This has improved greatly since first implementing this program.
  3. Better prepared if and when the real thing happens. Not only for the school and first responders but for the students as well.  Students will be conditioned to see officers in their school during drills, less traumatic impact during a real event.
  4. Consistency for the students, same response for K-5 as 9-12. Familiarization with police/first responders and their role in the event of an emergency.

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Monroe Principal Jared Hardman says, “we meet before and after every drill to discuss areas of improvement and discuss the outcome of the drill.” He says, “every teacher has a copy of the Standard Response Protocol manual, with all of the updated terminology.”

Truman Principal David Asselmeier agreed with Hardman and added, “the collaboration between the school and the first responders has allowed the drills to be much more authentic, and it has exposed some inconsistencies in terminology and made us look at all of our protocol with a different perspective.”

Lincoln Assistant Principal Joe Hamel added, “these drills are important, and making them as real as possible will only help us if something were to happen.”  As an example, Hamel said, “students and staff know that everyone who enters the building is to do so at the front doors and a woman got upset the other day that she was not let in at the old front door.”  He said, “a bunch of students just walked by the door, and when she did get in, she complained that our students are rude, but they did exactly as they were supposed to do.”

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As for why the drills are not announced beforehand, Officer Forsgren says, “sending drill dates and times is not a good idea because as always the ‘bad guys’ could use that information to watch and observe from a distance to see how we are doing things as far as our response plans and times.”

Jarvie says the plan in the future is to bring in Fire and EMS into the drills. Berringer summed up by saying, “our partnership is crucial in keeping students safe and equipping both families and staff with the support needed to face difficult situations.”

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