Educators Get Prepared For The Worst Will Learn System Police Use To Deal With Crises

When people train to be school principals, they learn to deal with employees, paperwork and problem students.

Traditionally, they don’t learn to deal with bombs.

Herb Rotchford got his first lesson two weeks ago while wired with adrenaline and eyeing what looked like an explosive. The Sacajawea Middle School principal acted on instinct. He carried the fake bomb outside, away from students.

Police wish he’d had more than instinct to rely on.

Starting next school year, Spokane District 81 principals and other educators will be armed with crisis training provided by police and fire officials.

They’ll learn all about the Incident Command System - the planning structure police, firefighters, medical workers and others who deal with community crises have long used.

The system allows agencies suddenly brought together to quickly establish a chain of command and make critical decisions more efficiently, said Acting Police Chief Roger Bragdon.

It’s the system that helped coordinate the emergency response when about 100,000 area homes and businesses lost power - some for more than a week - during the ice storm in November 1996. Officials also relied on it during the 1991 fire storm that ravaged the region.

Educators haven’t been trained to use the system. But after a rash of school shootings and violence across the country, Bragdon said, it’s high time educators join the team.

The system would have come in handy June 4 when Rotchford evacuated the South Hill school after students found the fake explosive in a boy’s bathroom, Bragdon said.

“That poor principal felt very alone for a bit,” Bragdon said. “The school district was sending teams to help him out, but he still felt some heavy, heavy decisions were on his shoulders.”

Had Rotchford alerted police before moving the device, he’d have received expert advice in handling it, Bragdon said.

That advice?

“We have an absolute don’t-touch rule in our department,” Bragdon said. “You always have to be worried about it being booby-trapped or so poorly built that if you jiggle it wrong, it goes off.”

A 14-year-old student awaits trial on charges involving bringing the device to school. It was the third scare in a week at the school, which was evacuated twice. Small explosives blew out two windows, and someone phoned in a bomb threat.

Police and educators worked well together on the last incident after the device was moved and officers were summoned, but the Incident Command System would’ve provided an automatic decision-making structure, Bragdon said. The system assigns various roles, such as who secures the perimeter, who gets supplies and who talks to news reporters.

“That’s been our bible in terms of getting our decision-making in one place,” said Assistant Police Chief John Sullivan. He said he knows of no other area school districts trained in the system. But he expects more will follow District 81’s lead.

“It’s so much better than each agency running back and forth trying to communicate,” he said. “It’s pretty bold on their part that they see this as important.”

Many decisions are best made jointly, Bragdon said. Police, for instance, could help principals decide when to evacuate a school. Bragdon said he isn’t suggesting Sacajawea was wrong to evacuate. But sometimes, students are safer inside.

“When you’ve got 600 to 1,000 kids outside of a school, you’ve somewhat lost control,” he said. “They’re off school grounds now. And there isn’t that much staff to control them. They’ll get all excited and run in front of a car, which is exactly what happened up at Sacajawea.”

Two girls were injured as they tried to cross the street after students were evacuated.

Police Capt. Al Odenthal said evacuations are based on several factors, including the nature of the threat and the size and shape of a suspicious item. “Is there anything in the school that would indicate this is a viable threat?” he said.

It would have been better to coordinate more closely with school officials when ice storm struck, too, said Bragdon. Some emergency workers thought children would be safer spending the night in schools because - unbeknownst to some of the principals who released them - some students had to walk home past downed power lines.

District 81 Superintendent Gary Livingston said he looks forward to the training for principals later this summer “so you’re not trying to figure it out in the middle of a crisis.”

Individual schools have already developed their own crisis plans and also have access to school security staff. The Incident Command System will take them a step further, Livingston said. “Clearly, the times dictate we have these kinds of conversations,” he said.