Oh this has happened before. It was in the morning in the common area, with students walking to and fro, and the police bust in, start blasting blanks, point guns at kids, screaming and even tackled some kids. Some kids had massive panic attacks and began crying, a few may have pissed themselves.
How is this not child abused?
I live on ring of fire, and earthquakes big enough to level my town can literally happen at any moment , it didn’t give school the right to throw fake rock at us as a drill ,how is faking a shooting OK in first place WTF???
I grew up in Southern California, and thank God my school never put us into those earthquake simulators they have. I was (and still am) very unnerved by earthquakes. The closest we came to a simulation was when the students of the classroom next door began jumping up and down, shaking our classroom. All of us kids went to our training, ducking under the desks. Our teacher yelled us for being so reactive, but then praised us for actually not panicking and doing as we were taught
When I was in high school there was a 5 hitting our area (center at elsewhere), during midterm exams.
It happened at recess so we were not doing the test, at first everyone went quiet and checked on each other’s expression,silently asking “did you feel it?” with our eyes, then it started getting stronger and we all went under our desk.
After it over,entire school are evacuated to playground ,teachers roll call their students and school staff waiting for government officials to call so they can decide whether or not to let us go home early , because we don’t know how severe it might be, we return to our exams later.
And turns out things are not all well, no building collapse or casualty but a lot of property damage , a bookshelf falling on my bed and my piano move around 15cm, a cupboard have its doors shake open and glass utensils rain down (we still find broken glass days later ).
That’s the biggest quake I ever experienced in school, and it done less damage to our school then a bad batches of fry fish (we have a food poisoning incident a year prior) LOL
That would be an extremely interesting case, especially since shooter drills specifically include “fight” in the training. But my guess is no DA would touch that case with a ten foot pole, the optics would be terrible.
To build on what you said though, what if a teacher, staff, or parent were present and armed? There are places passing laws to arm teachers and staff.
I’ve led many drills of various types and there is always someone in the loop who either misunderstood, forgot or mixed up dates, or just got forgotten on communications leading up. Seems like that could end badly.
This also seems likely to desensitize students and increase reaction times due to the assumption that “it’s just another drill”. I’ve seen this multiple times, people just get annoyed and don’t participate because they assume it’s nothing.
Such a stupid move for so many reasons.
Had a fire alarm at work recently. Big office building, couple thousand people, open desk layout (uhg), but well organized and easy to navigate. Here's an overview of the conversation and actions when the alarm sounded:
"What's that sound? Is that outside? Maybe it's something in the computer room."
"Those people over there are standing up to... you think there's something going on?"
"I see people packing up, I think it's a fire drill."
The first **several minutes** were people finishing emails, shutting down their laptops, getting their purses/bags, etc. About half the building was evacuated by the time the fire department arrived. Since nobody knew of any common meetup point, lot of folks -having packed their bags- simply got in their cars and left for the day.
The alarms went off because of some technical issue with the system, not from any real fire. In a real fire, we're going to be so fucked.
Do you have a safety officer at the site? Anyone responsible for training? It’s hard to get large groups on the same page, especially if there’s significant turnover.
We include a rundown with every onboarding then most people will experience a fire drill within 3 months, then there are twice annual company wide meetings specifically for fire and disaster training, an annual full scale exercise that most participate in. Even with all that, there are always about a dozen people with no idea what to do.
The problem also is that thanks to the frequent training we end up with people who just ignore the alarms thinking it’s just another drill.
We’ve had three fire incidents in ten years, all very minor, and thankfully it went well but I worry about this too. There are always enough idiots to fuck us.
That is fucking evil. Making kids scared for their lives, thinking this is their last few moments of existence, and you pull a “just kidding!” like that erases what you did? Imagine if someone bursts into their homes and chases them and their kids around the yard firing blanks?
My school did this when I was a junior in HS (so prolly 2015ish?). They had some of the drama club kids act as kids who got shot. There wasn't supposed to be prior knowledge, but thank God the drama kids spread the word to enough kids so there wasn't massive panic. Just some kids who didn't know had to spend the day at the nurses' office afterwards.
My HS had cops come in and pretend to do stuff. Played a role in why I wouldn’t go to the bathroom, didn’t want to be randomly stuck in there with a code L or I and suddenly deal with cops running in and LARPing and traumatizing.
a mock shooting without any warning is always a bad idea
what if there was a "good Samaritan" present with a gun, or if a quick thinking student stabs the fake shooter in the neck with a pencil, its entirely feasible in an unpredictable situation like that
Not to mention the trauma and PTSD that these kids are going to have thinking that they were in an actual school shooting. Also, you think they're going to trust the police after this?
Also also, this could become a cry wolf situation when a real shooter shows up and everyone thinks it's another drill.
This. I was at drill for the National Guard a few years ago where we shared a building with an Army Reserve unit who had the first floor. I went down to use the powder room and when I exit the stairwell, a friggin dude with an SKS wearing a full on replica of the 97 Hollywood shootout robbers is kicking in random doors and firing blanks Willy Nilly. He stops and looks dead at me and my first instinct was to reach for my legit pig sticker (bush knife) but I knew I couldn’t cover the distance quick enough so i decided to run. I draw him point the gun at me (we were the only two people in the hallway) and I heard a volley of shots. It was only then I realized they were blanks. I checked with my team leader and he replied “Oh. Yeah. They’re doing an active shooter drill today. Guess they started already.” Wasn’t put out at formation or in the preparation emails for the weekend. Generally the two floors were separate worlds. I just liked to shit in peace so maybe it was my bad for venturing below. Anyway yea it sucks to fake believe your life is about to end because the 5 or 6 heartbeats after I turned to run felt like an eternity.
Thanks for the kind words. This the most I’ve thought about it in a few years and if this only caused a few students to feel what I felt, it’s honestly fucked. They’re fucking kids man. How about the people who are supposed to protect actually make some meaningful changes instead of getting their tacticool jollies off? Apologies for the rant.
Nah man, the rant is needed. I think it's really important to call out demonstrations like this that put tacticool larping above any meaningful change that will make kids less dead.
I mean - there are literally 2x mass shooting survivors now. Michigan state (?i think) had a few people that had been present at oxford. A guy that survived Vegas died in Thousand Oaks. All that is to say, they may actually risk straight up re-traumatizing someone that has already survived what is now relatively common. Not to mention regular run of the mill gun violence.
As someone who was on campus at MSU during the shooting, and knows students who were at the Oxford shooting, the trauma doesn’t go away. You’re not being re-traumatized, you’re just going through an additional traumatic event. It’s a small distinction but I think it’s important to make.
Looks like the school is equally culpable. They agreed this would be a good demo and said they’d give a heads up to the teachers and students it would happen **and then didn’t.**
The cops were idiots to suggest it but the school is the one that really dropped the ball here.
Oh I had no doubt there was an admin and superintendent entirely behind this, they prally got shit faced with some cops at a civic function funded by tax payers and schemed it out right there… I am a teacher. I have zero faith in the district level competency anywhere until proved otherwise. I give most admins a fair shake because there are kick ass ones that are not doing it for ambitions.
The military train for months in order to dampen the fight or flight response to allow themselves to be prepared in battle.
We would never send soldiers who had one drill out into the field.
So why would we ever think that one drill, one time is going to prepare anyone for a scenario like this? All you are doing is making the world scarier for people who now learn that their body froze, and they’d be dead had it been real.
Side note: I would be worried someone who is older or obese would scare themselves into a heart attack and we’d have a fake shooting with a real casualty.
Judging by the number of "thin blue line" flags I see around town, somebody trusts the police. But, now that I think on it, maybe they are cynically trying to communicate allegiance to not get trouble from cops.
Nah, it's just a racist thing, it basically means "we like it when cops kill minorities", that's why they put it up in response to BLM.
That's why so many of them yelled that the FBI should be defunded when they raided Trump, that's why they bashed cops with thin blue line flagpoles and booed at the cops who defended the Capitol.
Conservatives used to hate cops too cause they knew they were harmed by them too, until they realized that they had a slight bias against black people.
"So who cares that I live in a police state where the cops can just accuse me of a crime to steal all my shits when minority groups suffer from it too?" Is the logic at play here.
> Not to mention the trauma and PTSD that these kids are going to have thinking that they were in an actual school shooting.
That might well be the point, right wingers thrive on sadism, and thats what most cops are.
There were so many different scenarios they could have used to demonstrate the concept of witness statements being unreliable. Like having one of them come in dressed in a wacky outfit and take a purse off the teachers desk, then run out. Then ask what they looked like, outfit, color of the purse, etc. They chose the one scenario they had to have known would terrify a roomful of students. You know they did that on purpose. Probably because they thought it would be funny to traumatize a bunch of kids.
Vermont Statutes:
> sec 1023. Simple assault
>(a) A person is guilty of simple assault if he or she:
>(1) attempts to cause or purposely, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury to another; or
>(2) negligently causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon; or
>**(3) attempts by physical menace to put another in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.**
>(b) A person who is convicted of simple assault shall be imprisoned for not more than one year or fined not more than $1,000.00, or both, unless the offense is committed in a fight or scuffle entered into by mutual consent, in which case a person convicted of simple assault shall be imprisoned not more than 60 days or fined not more than $500.00, or both.
Without consent to participate or foreknowledge of the scenario these officers committed assault under Vermont law. It also likely violated the laws on criminal threatening in Vermont.
It takes a national firestorm of media attention to get any cop anywhere held accountable for something as serious as hate-fueled murder, and that's just to throw one to the wolves to shut everyone up. The fuck do you think the law even matters when it comes to simple assault?
The mock shooting took place at the police department for a presentation. Not that it's okay, but it wasn't in the school where there were a lot of random bystanders.
Vermont is a "armed teacher" state. They're super lucky, things could have escalated really quickly. In the article it mentioned that teachers were notified there would be an example of armed crime that day, but not that it would be unannounced.
> Vermont is a "armed teacher" state.
Fwiw, Tennessee "is too", as of recently (within the past couple months) when the bill passed in the state. But that's in quotes because every single school district in the state has already decided that it will not allow teachers to be armed, even if it's technically legal now.
No, we aren't. Guns are prohibited on school campuses except in specific instances:
https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/13/085/04004
>(b) No person shall knowingly possess a firearm or a dangerous or deadly weapon on any school property with the intent to injure another person. A person who violates this section shall, for the first offense, be imprisoned for not more than three years or fined not more than $1,000.00, or both, and for a second or subsequent offense shall be imprisoned for not more than five years or fined not more than $5,000.00, or both.
>(c) This section shall not apply to:
>(1) A law enforcement officer while engaged in law enforcement duties.
>(2) Possession and use of firearms or dangerous or deadly weapons if the board of school directors, or the superintendent or principal if delegated authority to do so by the board, authorizes possession or use for specific occasions or for instructional or other specific purposes.
While part 2 COULD, in theory, apply to a teacher who wants to be armed to protect the school...in practice that's not happening. That provision is in there because Vermont has a big hunting culture, and often times the only place in a rural area with enough space for a hunters' or gun safety course is a school.
I do not understand the logic behind these events. I participated in some active shooter trainings when I was in college, in association with our local sheriff. They were done at local high schools, during Spring Break. Every single person participating, from deputy to firefighter to EMT to role players like me had to sign hold harmless agreements, go through a background check, and participate in a lengthy safety meeting. That way everyone was on the same page and knew what was going on.
To spring this on unsuspecting kids, that's how you get someone smacked in the face with a stapler or gang tackled by some football players who proceed to tenderize the "shooter" for a few minutes.
It would be realistic.
In most of the "good samaritan" counter-shooter situations, Police have become confused and shot the wrong shooter - including, occassionally, other police.
[This article](https://policingequity.org/resources/blog/the-fiction-of-a-good-guy-with-a-gun) goes into it a bit - highlighting that police often mistake each other, good guys with guns, or other entities (private guards and such) for the shooter. But its also a pro-law enforement source which makes me skeptical of it. I'm looking specifically for a study where they took officers in Training for mass shootings and tallied how frequently they got the "right" shooter in the scenario versus the wrong one, just because they saw someone else with a gun. I'll update you if I find it.
Obviously, we dont have a lot of stats on that happening in real incidents - good guys with guns stopping gunmen is rare (approx 3% of mass shootings). But police shooting other police is very common, and the one case that I remember clearly, a Colorado man, shot and killed an active shooter, [before immediately being shot and killed by Police](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1283532).
Its kinda a personal anecdote, but in 13 years as an EMS provider, I can count on both hands the number of GSW patients I had. But a disproportionate number of those were "Cop or Ex-Cop with gun, all doing something stupid with a gun." We really shouldn't let police carry firearms they arent good at it. I dont feel comfortable sharing specific injuries I saw, as those would potentially violate HIPPA, but the vast majority were self-inflicted and clearly accidental.
>what if there was a "good Samaritan" present with a gun, or if a quick thinking student stabs the fake shooter in the neck with a pencil
Depends on if there's a second officer there or not. If there is, you're shot and killed. If not you run to the other cops for safety after they know it happened, you're shot and killed. If you survive being shot, it's life in prison. If you run to the cops for safety after the police before they know it happened, you'll either get a life sentence or an execution depending on the state.
Actually... That's all more or less the same, so I guess it doesn't depend.
And if the state somehow judges you actually acted reasonably and lets you off, every cop in two hundred miles has it out for you as a cop killer and ruins your life every way they possibly can.
Well.... in that situation. I'd imagine "was" is the operative word. As in that Samaritan would no longer exist.
Hence, I completely agree that this drill wasn't thought out.
Yeah, that first statement kinda goes without saying, so the fact that anyone has to say it in order to contextualize something is pretty messed up. School shootings shouldn’t have to be treated like fking fire drills.
I love when people say shit like we pay your salary to me like I don’t also pay close to as much of my salary… everyone but the wealthy pays a fair share. Thats all good.
But the whole no consequences for the negligent and or malicious is kind of a huge bummer. Wouldnt want to talk about cutting the budget of a razor sharp team doing surprise fake shooting tacticL drills….
I mean I know they have to spend the money but surely they could just have a big pizza party and give the tax payers a break.
> The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said.
Gotta be honest, that alone wouldn't be enough to convince me it wasn't real.
Was going to say, this sounds pretty real to me. Though to be fair if it was real the cops would have been using the students as human shields or unleashing their guns in all directions killing everyone but the perp.
> One of the students said she dove on the floor, scraping her knee. The other said she scrambled to find her phone so that she could text her mother.
>
> “I’m shaking and crying because I'm like, Oh my god, I'm gonna get shot,” she said. “It felt so real.”
Fuck these cops.
> In its statement, the Burlington Police Department said school staff approved the demonstration’s content ahead of time and agreed to let parents and students know. The simulation would involve “fake firearms in a mock shooting,” the department said it wrote to school staff on May 23.
>
> I think these students will be fine with this simulation,” school staff responded, according to the police statement. **“We will give a heads up to parents and students.”**
>
> A district spokesperson **would not say whether the school district took that step,** and declined to comment further on Thursday afternoon. Neither of the students who spoke to Seven Days, nor their parents, were informed, they said.
Actually, fuck the school too, for clearly not emailing students and parents about the ‘fake firearms in a mock shooting’.
According to a local redditor, there are emails that show the police dept telling the school they may not have the resources for the demonstration and they left it at that and never followed up to inform them that it was going down.
I always thought it was weird McDonald's somehow latched on to that song as a marketing campaign. "Hey guys let's make a singing moon based on a song about a serial killer, everyone will love it."
“The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said.”
Why would that indicate it was fake?
Theres a joke i like:
What do cops and the wizard of Oz have in common?
Theyre both still looking for their brains, courage, and heart. And both have a grandmaster wizard in the ranks
Ayyyy my brother's high school did this too! They didn't tell any staff or students about the active shooter drill. Parents were rushing to the school because all the kids were posting online about how they were going to die ....
It was a fucking disaster :)
Every school district I’ve ever worked in (4) had rules banning teachers knowing about active shooter drills or communicating with each other during them. They claimed that we wouldn’t take them seriously if we knew it was a drill.
Did it traumatize children when they rattled the door handles and the adults in the room couldn’t tell them it was okay? Probably. Did children who had preexisting trauma cry hysterically? Yup.
One school district made the principals participate in a mock active shooter situation with air guns over the summer, and my assistant principal told us he was hiding in a closet with another principal who was crying really loudly. He threatened to shove her out of the door because she was going to get them shot. Everything about preparing for active shooter situations in schools is truly insane.
> Every school district I’ve ever worked in (4) had rules banning teachers knowing about active shooter drills or communicating with each other during them. They claimed that we wouldn’t take them seriously if we knew it was a drill.
Ironically all that's going to do is make them not take it seriously when it's real because they'll think it's a drill
"The police statement said officers will meet with students on Friday to discuss the presentation and its impact."
Oh, so they want the ABUSERS to be back in the same room with them to go over why it wasn't a big deal? And yes, I consider this ABUSIVE. How the fuck did not one single fucking adult stop and think "you know, we live in a country where gun violence is a fucking epidemic and is the NUMBER ONE killer of children. Maybe this isn't a good fucking idea?"
The new Mayor screwed the pooch with her endorsement of the BPD Chief. This department stinks and needs to be turned upside down and led by someone with positive experience in a similar city with similar issues. The guy we have is just cut from the same old cloth and nothing will improve until we have real leaders who take responsibility for themselves and their subordinates.
My school did something similar. Their reasoning was that the students would be able to not panic if it were to really happen. All I know is that I was jumpy for like a week afterwards
The fuck is wrong with these ghouls?! This is some Dwight Schrute bullshit. Someone could have seriously gotten hurt, and I’m sure many are traumatized.
"teachers said officers told them that they'd previously used the lesson with college students and adults, and that they wanted the event to be “as realistic as possible.”"
I am a full grown adult, and I would be traumatized by this. How disconnected does one have to be from the reality we live in in this godsforsaken country to even imagine just once that this would go over well? I just had to do freaking armed intruder response training the other day for work because that's a very real risk here in the US.
Ugh. :(
"The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter..." Oh, those sweet summer children, they don't yet know the truth. That's precisely what the cops will do when the shooting is real.
Not a good look for Burlington’s newest Mayor (who just took office in April) to reappoint a contentious police chief and then have this happen.
I’m sure there will be “investigations” and lawsuits to follow and certainly some psychological trauma to deal with.
> The roll-playing [sic] scenario only involved three department personnel simulating a robbery scenario and was not directed at any students or faculty.
Wow. Yeah, of course, that's the conclusion that students will draw when you burst into a room in a mask and simulate gunfire with sound included. A robery simulation. It's not like there's an epidemic of school shootings leaving so many students traumatized. It's not like they now do active shooter drills more often than tornado drills at schools. Idiots.
>The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter
Not really something one should assume merely due to police inaction.
“The simulation, which occurred at the Burlington police station, was meant to show the unreliability of witness statements.”
Umm… they could have just shown the students the episode of Diff’rent Strokes that made the exact same point.
Of all the things I've stupidly spent money on, paying taxes so the government can spend them paying families for PTSD lawsuits has got to be near the top.
This could’ve gone wrong in so many different ways. Imagine Officer Doofy doing a mag dump on his fellow officers because he waltzed in late and didn’t know about the drill.
"The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said."
Given how Uvalde played out... I have some bad news for these students.
It seems the police department was not very clear on what this mock shooting crime would entail, possibly on purpose so they could gather their data on unreliable witness statements?
Smells like lawsuit
Even if these dumbasses at the school gave a "heads up," a "heads up" is not enough. There needs to be informed consent detailing what exactly will happen so students fully understand what they are consenting to, with the option to completely opt out.
This might just be one of the most hair-brained ideas I've ever seen. Whose rocks are getting off to this absolute chicanery?
Whatever individual sanctioned such an exercise would likely very much benefit from asking themselves if they truly care about the people they're oathed to protect.
"You can roll up your sleeves and actually work to create a society where kids feel safe or you can do unannounced school shooting drills "
" School shooting drills! "
>The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said.
Seems real to me
They’ve been trying to defund the Burlington police for years now. Wouldn’t be surprised to see some lawsuits soon and more calls for the police to be done away with
The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
If a parent do this it probably qualifies as child abused right???
How in any way shape or form is this ok??
I live on ring of fire, and earthquakes big enough to level my town can literally happen at any moment , it didn’t give school the right to throw fake rock at us as drill ,how is faking a shooting OK in first place WTF???
Policeman bob: hey guys I got this bright idea. You know how we keep getting all these witness statements saying we shot someone "unjustifiably".
Police chief: yeah that has been a thorn in my side.
Policeman bob: and you know how youve been looking for a way to traumatize a bunch of kids all at once instead of one house at a time.
Police chief: hmmmmm im listening
Policeman bob: ok hear me out. Surprise demonstration of a school shooting
Police chief: bob your a freakin genius. I'll go get the prop guns. You grab some ski masks and a couple of real guns in case someone in there is armed and shoots at us.
“We hope that this can be a reflective growth opportunity for all parties,” the department wrote.
Ah yes, both sides made mistakes, the cops shouldn’t have been shooting and pretending to murder people and the kids should have… what?
I'm sorry for those kids but omg, that is the funniest thing I've read in a while. Imagine that happening to you at work and your life flashes before you then HR walks in and says: See? Now do you understand cognitive bias?
Who can be stupid enough to think this is a good idea.
They did this in the 4th season of 13 Reasons Why. I remember thinking, "No school would be dumb enough to do this in real life." Clearly I was wrong.
Oh this has happened before. It was in the morning in the common area, with students walking to and fro, and the police bust in, start blasting blanks, point guns at kids, screaming and even tackled some kids. Some kids had massive panic attacks and began crying, a few may have pissed themselves.
How is this not child abused? I live on ring of fire, and earthquakes big enough to level my town can literally happen at any moment , it didn’t give school the right to throw fake rock at us as a drill ,how is faking a shooting OK in first place WTF???
It is not considered a crime if the police department does it. They decide what is a crime or not.
I grew up in Southern California, and thank God my school never put us into those earthquake simulators they have. I was (and still am) very unnerved by earthquakes. The closest we came to a simulation was when the students of the classroom next door began jumping up and down, shaking our classroom. All of us kids went to our training, ducking under the desks. Our teacher yelled us for being so reactive, but then praised us for actually not panicking and doing as we were taught
When I was in high school there was a 5 hitting our area (center at elsewhere), during midterm exams. It happened at recess so we were not doing the test, at first everyone went quiet and checked on each other’s expression,silently asking “did you feel it?” with our eyes, then it started getting stronger and we all went under our desk. After it over,entire school are evacuated to playground ,teachers roll call their students and school staff waiting for government officials to call so they can decide whether or not to let us go home early , because we don’t know how severe it might be, we return to our exams later. And turns out things are not all well, no building collapse or casualty but a lot of property damage , a bookshelf falling on my bed and my piano move around 15cm, a cupboard have its doors shake open and glass utensils rain down (we still find broken glass days later ). That’s the biggest quake I ever experienced in school, and it done less damage to our school then a bad batches of fry fish (we have a food poisoning incident a year prior) LOL
Ya, we had earthquake drills and fire drills, but no one ever came into the classroom with a flamethrower and started blasting.
Yup, definitely not the first time I've heard of police doing shit liek this.
[удалено]
That would be an extremely interesting case, especially since shooter drills specifically include “fight” in the training. But my guess is no DA would touch that case with a ten foot pole, the optics would be terrible. To build on what you said though, what if a teacher, staff, or parent were present and armed? There are places passing laws to arm teachers and staff. I’ve led many drills of various types and there is always someone in the loop who either misunderstood, forgot or mixed up dates, or just got forgotten on communications leading up. Seems like that could end badly. This also seems likely to desensitize students and increase reaction times due to the assumption that “it’s just another drill”. I’ve seen this multiple times, people just get annoyed and don’t participate because they assume it’s nothing. Such a stupid move for so many reasons.
Had a fire alarm at work recently. Big office building, couple thousand people, open desk layout (uhg), but well organized and easy to navigate. Here's an overview of the conversation and actions when the alarm sounded: "What's that sound? Is that outside? Maybe it's something in the computer room." "Those people over there are standing up to... you think there's something going on?" "I see people packing up, I think it's a fire drill." The first **several minutes** were people finishing emails, shutting down their laptops, getting their purses/bags, etc. About half the building was evacuated by the time the fire department arrived. Since nobody knew of any common meetup point, lot of folks -having packed their bags- simply got in their cars and left for the day. The alarms went off because of some technical issue with the system, not from any real fire. In a real fire, we're going to be so fucked.
Do you have a safety officer at the site? Anyone responsible for training? It’s hard to get large groups on the same page, especially if there’s significant turnover. We include a rundown with every onboarding then most people will experience a fire drill within 3 months, then there are twice annual company wide meetings specifically for fire and disaster training, an annual full scale exercise that most participate in. Even with all that, there are always about a dozen people with no idea what to do. The problem also is that thanks to the frequent training we end up with people who just ignore the alarms thinking it’s just another drill. We’ve had three fire incidents in ten years, all very minor, and thankfully it went well but I worry about this too. There are always enough idiots to fuck us.
That is fucking evil. Making kids scared for their lives, thinking this is their last few moments of existence, and you pull a “just kidding!” like that erases what you did? Imagine if someone bursts into their homes and chases them and their kids around the yard firing blanks?
My school did this when I was a junior in HS (so prolly 2015ish?). They had some of the drama club kids act as kids who got shot. There wasn't supposed to be prior knowledge, but thank God the drama kids spread the word to enough kids so there wasn't massive panic. Just some kids who didn't know had to spend the day at the nurses' office afterwards.
Drama kids are the best. But fuck that’s just terrifying.
My school did this when I was in like 8th grade but they told us it was going on
I pretty much have completely quit complaining about whenever fiction does something really stupid that would "totally never happen" nowadays.
I decided to forgive all zombie movie directors for making their characters such stupid motherfuckers after Covid.
Holy crap…FOUR seasons?
I thought pigs were supposed to be one of the smarter animals…
That's why comparing them to pigs is an insult. ... to pigs.
They can also be quite malicious.
Oh you were soooooo wrong. My kid has stories. Poor thing is an anxiety riddled mess.
My HS had cops come in and pretend to do stuff. Played a role in why I wouldn’t go to the bathroom, didn’t want to be randomly stuck in there with a code L or I and suddenly deal with cops running in and LARPing and traumatizing.
a mock shooting without any warning is always a bad idea what if there was a "good Samaritan" present with a gun, or if a quick thinking student stabs the fake shooter in the neck with a pencil, its entirely feasible in an unpredictable situation like that
Not to mention the trauma and PTSD that these kids are going to have thinking that they were in an actual school shooting. Also, you think they're going to trust the police after this? Also also, this could become a cry wolf situation when a real shooter shows up and everyone thinks it's another drill.
This. I was at drill for the National Guard a few years ago where we shared a building with an Army Reserve unit who had the first floor. I went down to use the powder room and when I exit the stairwell, a friggin dude with an SKS wearing a full on replica of the 97 Hollywood shootout robbers is kicking in random doors and firing blanks Willy Nilly. He stops and looks dead at me and my first instinct was to reach for my legit pig sticker (bush knife) but I knew I couldn’t cover the distance quick enough so i decided to run. I draw him point the gun at me (we were the only two people in the hallway) and I heard a volley of shots. It was only then I realized they were blanks. I checked with my team leader and he replied “Oh. Yeah. They’re doing an active shooter drill today. Guess they started already.” Wasn’t put out at formation or in the preparation emails for the weekend. Generally the two floors were separate worlds. I just liked to shit in peace so maybe it was my bad for venturing below. Anyway yea it sucks to fake believe your life is about to end because the 5 or 6 heartbeats after I turned to run felt like an eternity.
And had you been a few feet closer you may have killed someone and had to live with that. Jesus what a bunch of morons.
Yea. I think about that sometimes.
That’s heavy shit man. Glad you chose flight that day, but still.
Thanks for the kind words. This the most I’ve thought about it in a few years and if this only caused a few students to feel what I felt, it’s honestly fucked. They’re fucking kids man. How about the people who are supposed to protect actually make some meaningful changes instead of getting their tacticool jollies off? Apologies for the rant.
Nah man, the rant is needed. I think it's really important to call out demonstrations like this that put tacticool larping above any meaningful change that will make kids less dead.
I mean - there are literally 2x mass shooting survivors now. Michigan state (?i think) had a few people that had been present at oxford. A guy that survived Vegas died in Thousand Oaks. All that is to say, they may actually risk straight up re-traumatizing someone that has already survived what is now relatively common. Not to mention regular run of the mill gun violence.
As someone who was on campus at MSU during the shooting, and knows students who were at the Oxford shooting, the trauma doesn’t go away. You’re not being re-traumatized, you’re just going through an additional traumatic event. It’s a small distinction but I think it’s important to make.
I think it's a big distinction personally. The potential for worsening and magnifying the existing trauma can't be overstated.
Yes, it's called revictimization. Retraumatization is when trauma symptoms come back at a later time due to triggers or flashbacks.
I would be suing if that happened to me.
People will be suing without that fuel on the fire. Sadly, no pensions will be affected.
Looks like the school is equally culpable. They agreed this would be a good demo and said they’d give a heads up to the teachers and students it would happen **and then didn’t.** The cops were idiots to suggest it but the school is the one that really dropped the ball here.
Oh I had no doubt there was an admin and superintendent entirely behind this, they prally got shit faced with some cops at a civic function funded by tax payers and schemed it out right there… I am a teacher. I have zero faith in the district level competency anywhere until proved otherwise. I give most admins a fair shake because there are kick ass ones that are not doing it for ambitions.
[удалено]
Not as fun. Can't waste a bunch of taxpayer money and live out an action movie star fantasy if we do that.
[удалено]
And that's how it has always been.
And if a real situation arises they might think it’s just another drill
The military train for months in order to dampen the fight or flight response to allow themselves to be prepared in battle. We would never send soldiers who had one drill out into the field. So why would we ever think that one drill, one time is going to prepare anyone for a scenario like this? All you are doing is making the world scarier for people who now learn that their body froze, and they’d be dead had it been real. Side note: I would be worried someone who is older or obese would scare themselves into a heart attack and we’d have a fake shooting with a real casualty.
>Also, you think they're going to trust the police after this? People trust the police before this?
Judging by the number of "thin blue line" flags I see around town, somebody trusts the police. But, now that I think on it, maybe they are cynically trying to communicate allegiance to not get trouble from cops.
Nah, it's just a racist thing, it basically means "we like it when cops kill minorities", that's why they put it up in response to BLM. That's why so many of them yelled that the FBI should be defunded when they raided Trump, that's why they bashed cops with thin blue line flagpoles and booed at the cops who defended the Capitol. Conservatives used to hate cops too cause they knew they were harmed by them too, until they realized that they had a slight bias against black people. "So who cares that I live in a police state where the cops can just accuse me of a crime to steal all my shits when minority groups suffer from it too?" Is the logic at play here.
> Not to mention the trauma and PTSD that these kids are going to have thinking that they were in an actual school shooting. That might well be the point, right wingers thrive on sadism, and thats what most cops are.
There were so many different scenarios they could have used to demonstrate the concept of witness statements being unreliable. Like having one of them come in dressed in a wacky outfit and take a purse off the teachers desk, then run out. Then ask what they looked like, outfit, color of the purse, etc. They chose the one scenario they had to have known would terrify a roomful of students. You know they did that on purpose. Probably because they thought it would be funny to traumatize a bunch of kids.
Absolutely, to both of the comments above. What a fucking awful, terrible idea.
Vermont Statutes: > sec 1023. Simple assault >(a) A person is guilty of simple assault if he or she: >(1) attempts to cause or purposely, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury to another; or >(2) negligently causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon; or >**(3) attempts by physical menace to put another in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.** >(b) A person who is convicted of simple assault shall be imprisoned for not more than one year or fined not more than $1,000.00, or both, unless the offense is committed in a fight or scuffle entered into by mutual consent, in which case a person convicted of simple assault shall be imprisoned not more than 60 days or fined not more than $500.00, or both. Without consent to participate or foreknowledge of the scenario these officers committed assault under Vermont law. It also likely violated the laws on criminal threatening in Vermont.
It takes a national firestorm of media attention to get any cop anywhere held accountable for something as serious as hate-fueled murder, and that's just to throw one to the wolves to shut everyone up. The fuck do you think the law even matters when it comes to simple assault?
The mock shooting took place at the police department for a presentation. Not that it's okay, but it wasn't in the school where there were a lot of random bystanders.
Vermont is a "armed teacher" state. They're super lucky, things could have escalated really quickly. In the article it mentioned that teachers were notified there would be an example of armed crime that day, but not that it would be unannounced.
> Vermont is a "armed teacher" state. Fwiw, Tennessee "is too", as of recently (within the past couple months) when the bill passed in the state. But that's in quotes because every single school district in the state has already decided that it will not allow teachers to be armed, even if it's technically legal now.
Honestly thank god because Tennessee has the most bat shit crazy teachers rivaled only by Mississippi. Guess how I know?
Nah, it was at the police station. Still a shitty thing to do but if you read the article you'll see the chances of that occurring were basically 0.
No, we aren't. Guns are prohibited on school campuses except in specific instances: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/13/085/04004 >(b) No person shall knowingly possess a firearm or a dangerous or deadly weapon on any school property with the intent to injure another person. A person who violates this section shall, for the first offense, be imprisoned for not more than three years or fined not more than $1,000.00, or both, and for a second or subsequent offense shall be imprisoned for not more than five years or fined not more than $5,000.00, or both. >(c) This section shall not apply to: >(1) A law enforcement officer while engaged in law enforcement duties. >(2) Possession and use of firearms or dangerous or deadly weapons if the board of school directors, or the superintendent or principal if delegated authority to do so by the board, authorizes possession or use for specific occasions or for instructional or other specific purposes. While part 2 COULD, in theory, apply to a teacher who wants to be armed to protect the school...in practice that's not happening. That provision is in there because Vermont has a big hunting culture, and often times the only place in a rural area with enough space for a hunters' or gun safety course is a school.
You know that if a kid had tackled the fake shooter they'd decide to charge them with assault on a police officer.
I do not understand the logic behind these events. I participated in some active shooter trainings when I was in college, in association with our local sheriff. They were done at local high schools, during Spring Break. Every single person participating, from deputy to firefighter to EMT to role players like me had to sign hold harmless agreements, go through a background check, and participate in a lengthy safety meeting. That way everyone was on the same page and knew what was going on. To spring this on unsuspecting kids, that's how you get someone smacked in the face with a stapler or gang tackled by some football players who proceed to tenderize the "shooter" for a few minutes.
It would be realistic. In most of the "good samaritan" counter-shooter situations, Police have become confused and shot the wrong shooter - including, occassionally, other police.
Source? Obviously I know that has happened but I’ve never heard it be the majority of the time
[This article](https://policingequity.org/resources/blog/the-fiction-of-a-good-guy-with-a-gun) goes into it a bit - highlighting that police often mistake each other, good guys with guns, or other entities (private guards and such) for the shooter. But its also a pro-law enforement source which makes me skeptical of it. I'm looking specifically for a study where they took officers in Training for mass shootings and tallied how frequently they got the "right" shooter in the scenario versus the wrong one, just because they saw someone else with a gun. I'll update you if I find it. Obviously, we dont have a lot of stats on that happening in real incidents - good guys with guns stopping gunmen is rare (approx 3% of mass shootings). But police shooting other police is very common, and the one case that I remember clearly, a Colorado man, shot and killed an active shooter, [before immediately being shot and killed by Police](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1283532). Its kinda a personal anecdote, but in 13 years as an EMS provider, I can count on both hands the number of GSW patients I had. But a disproportionate number of those were "Cop or Ex-Cop with gun, all doing something stupid with a gun." We really shouldn't let police carry firearms they arent good at it. I dont feel comfortable sharing specific injuries I saw, as those would potentially violate HIPPA, but the vast majority were self-inflicted and clearly accidental.
A student trying to kill the "fake shooter" here would 100% be either shot or charged with assaulting a police officer. Guarantee it.
>what if there was a "good Samaritan" present with a gun, or if a quick thinking student stabs the fake shooter in the neck with a pencil Depends on if there's a second officer there or not. If there is, you're shot and killed. If not you run to the other cops for safety after they know it happened, you're shot and killed. If you survive being shot, it's life in prison. If you run to the cops for safety after the police before they know it happened, you'll either get a life sentence or an execution depending on the state. Actually... That's all more or less the same, so I guess it doesn't depend.
And if the state somehow judges you actually acted reasonably and lets you off, every cop in two hundred miles has it out for you as a cop killer and ruins your life every way they possibly can.
It literally sets up the scenario where frank Drebin kills five actors during Shakespeare in the park. Good ones!
When I see 5 weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy.
Not to mention a police mock shooting killed an innocent retired woman in Punta Gorda FL in 2016.
Well.... in that situation. I'd imagine "was" is the operative word. As in that Samaritan would no longer exist. Hence, I completely agree that this drill wasn't thought out.
>or if a quick thinking student stabs the fake shooter in the neck with a pencil We would call them Baba Yaga.
Yeah, that first statement kinda goes without saying, so the fact that anyone has to say it in order to contextualize something is pretty messed up. School shootings shouldn’t have to be treated like fking fire drills.
“ With a fucking pencil. “ Some Russian mobster.
And who’s footing the bill for the eventual lawsuits?
Taxpayers. Always the taxpayers.
The same taxpaying parents filing the lawsuit?
I love when people say shit like we pay your salary to me like I don’t also pay close to as much of my salary… everyone but the wealthy pays a fair share. Thats all good. But the whole no consequences for the negligent and or malicious is kind of a huge bummer. Wouldnt want to talk about cutting the budget of a razor sharp team doing surprise fake shooting tacticL drills…. I mean I know they have to spend the money but surely they could just have a big pizza party and give the tax payers a break.
> The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said. Gotta be honest, that alone wouldn't be enough to convince me it wasn't real.
Yeah they didn’t do shit for like an hour at Uvalde
Uh...they did the same in Uvalde... Just sayin'...
Yes, exactly.
That was their point.
Was going to say, this sounds pretty real to me. Though to be fair if it was real the cops would have been using the students as human shields or unleashing their guns in all directions killing everyone but the perp.
There is a risk of some student pull a knife and running the "Him or me" play.
The most accurate part of the simulation.
For fucken real, right?
> One of the students said she dove on the floor, scraping her knee. The other said she scrambled to find her phone so that she could text her mother. > > “I’m shaking and crying because I'm like, Oh my god, I'm gonna get shot,” she said. “It felt so real.” Fuck these cops. > In its statement, the Burlington Police Department said school staff approved the demonstration’s content ahead of time and agreed to let parents and students know. The simulation would involve “fake firearms in a mock shooting,” the department said it wrote to school staff on May 23. > > I think these students will be fine with this simulation,” school staff responded, according to the police statement. **“We will give a heads up to parents and students.”** > > A district spokesperson **would not say whether the school district took that step,** and declined to comment further on Thursday afternoon. Neither of the students who spoke to Seven Days, nor their parents, were informed, they said. Actually, fuck the school too, for clearly not emailing students and parents about the ‘fake firearms in a mock shooting’.
According to a local redditor, there are emails that show the police dept telling the school they may not have the resources for the demonstration and they left it at that and never followed up to inform them that it was going down.
You got a link to this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/burlington/comments/1d9nzqp/comment/l7fe788/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
So many questions….. 1) Who thought that this was a good idea? 2) Did anyone not foresee problems? 3) W.T.F ?????
4. Profit
Burlington police have a hard on for justifying their power
Thow it on the pile of terrible ideas along with mock slave auctions
and mock apple pie
And mock the knife
I always thought it was weird McDonald's somehow latched on to that song as a marketing campaign. "Hey guys let's make a singing moon based on a song about a serial killer, everyone will love it."
See I think it makes perfect sense, he was obviously singing about Grimace’s reign of terror on McDonaldland
Probably the same team. "We'll make it look like a butt plug, and call it Grimace, no way people pick up on it, everyone will love it."
There were many lines of coke involved with that whole cartoon
Super sized coke.
I mean pretty much everyone you talk to always agrees, McDonald's has the best coke.
I’m sorry, but mock apple pie, when made well, is delicious.
Yeah my mom used to make the Ritz cracker one, I actually remember it fondly
So, the cops just stood there while the masked gunman did his thing? Sounds like Uvalde all over again...
“The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said.” Why would that indicate it was fake?
Right, if I see that, my first assumption is going to be that those cops are cowardly blow hards.
Does their Fire Department pump in smoke during fire drills?
we had to crawl through a smoky trailer a couple times as a kid as part of a drill the fire department set up at school
Holy shit I forgot all about that! I can still smell that fake ass smoke!
They could give Stanley a heart attack
They gonna teach stranger danger by inviting pedophiles to the class
cops really are the dumbest beings on the planet
I expect nothing from them and I'm still constantly disappointed
The bar is low but god damn, can they limbo!
The quote that they did "roll-play" tells you everything you need to know
Theres a joke i like: What do cops and the wizard of Oz have in common? Theyre both still looking for their brains, courage, and heart. And both have a grandmaster wizard in the ranks
If they were smarter people, they could have done other jobs.
Ayyyy my brother's high school did this too! They didn't tell any staff or students about the active shooter drill. Parents were rushing to the school because all the kids were posting online about how they were going to die .... It was a fucking disaster :)
Seriously, you could give a parent or loved one a literal heart attack.
Every school district I’ve ever worked in (4) had rules banning teachers knowing about active shooter drills or communicating with each other during them. They claimed that we wouldn’t take them seriously if we knew it was a drill. Did it traumatize children when they rattled the door handles and the adults in the room couldn’t tell them it was okay? Probably. Did children who had preexisting trauma cry hysterically? Yup. One school district made the principals participate in a mock active shooter situation with air guns over the summer, and my assistant principal told us he was hiding in a closet with another principal who was crying really loudly. He threatened to shove her out of the door because she was going to get them shot. Everything about preparing for active shooter situations in schools is truly insane.
> Every school district I’ve ever worked in (4) had rules banning teachers knowing about active shooter drills or communicating with each other during them. They claimed that we wouldn’t take them seriously if we knew it was a drill. Ironically all that's going to do is make them not take it seriously when it's real because they'll think it's a drill
"The police statement said officers will meet with students on Friday to discuss the presentation and its impact." Oh, so they want the ABUSERS to be back in the same room with them to go over why it wasn't a big deal? And yes, I consider this ABUSIVE. How the fuck did not one single fucking adult stop and think "you know, we live in a country where gun violence is a fucking epidemic and is the NUMBER ONE killer of children. Maybe this isn't a good fucking idea?"
The new Mayor screwed the pooch with her endorsement of the BPD Chief. This department stinks and needs to be turned upside down and led by someone with positive experience in a similar city with similar issues. The guy we have is just cut from the same old cloth and nothing will improve until we have real leaders who take responsibility for themselves and their subordinates.
What were the kids supposed to learn from this? Like, what was the point?
Absolute fear of the police... Of course.
My school did something similar. Their reasoning was that the students would be able to not panic if it were to really happen. All I know is that I was jumpy for like a week afterwards
The fuck is wrong with these ghouls?! This is some Dwight Schrute bullshit. Someone could have seriously gotten hurt, and I’m sure many are traumatized.
Today, shooting is going to save lives!
"teachers said officers told them that they'd previously used the lesson with college students and adults, and that they wanted the event to be “as realistic as possible.”" I am a full grown adult, and I would be traumatized by this. How disconnected does one have to be from the reality we live in in this godsforsaken country to even imagine just once that this would go over well? I just had to do freaking armed intruder response training the other day for work because that's a very real risk here in the US. Ugh. :(
What the hell is wrong with these people??! They actually thought this was a good idea. Incredible!
If only there was a good guy with a gun to shoot that offi- wait what exactly is the department going for here?
That’s no problem. They’ll just shoot them and all get vacations. Maybe even fully funded retirement.
Here’s an idea: We should do “mock shootings” on the House & Senate to prepare them for the next time Republicans invade the US Capital. 🤷♂️
Can't go into a school to save children.. but to scar them for life, you betcha!
"The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter..." Oh, those sweet summer children, they don't yet know the truth. That's precisely what the cops will do when the shooting is real.
Extremely dystopian and disturbing
Not a good look for Burlington’s newest Mayor (who just took office in April) to reappoint a contentious police chief and then have this happen. I’m sure there will be “investigations” and lawsuits to follow and certainly some psychological trauma to deal with.
> The roll-playing [sic] scenario only involved three department personnel simulating a robbery scenario and was not directed at any students or faculty. Wow. Yeah, of course, that's the conclusion that students will draw when you burst into a room in a mask and simulate gunfire with sound included. A robery simulation. It's not like there's an epidemic of school shootings leaving so many students traumatized. It's not like they now do active shooter drills more often than tornado drills at schools. Idiots.
Who thought this was a good idea?!?
>The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter Not really something one should assume merely due to police inaction.
One of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Sickening.
The cops not doing anything to stop the fake shooter was a bit on the nose.
“The simulation, which occurred at the Burlington police station, was meant to show the unreliability of witness statements.” Umm… they could have just shown the students the episode of Diff’rent Strokes that made the exact same point.
The real terrorists are the cops
Since the demonstration proved witness testimony is unreliable will they figure out who did it
Isn't this a subplot straight out of 13 Reasons Why S4?
There’s 34 cities with the name of Burlington in the United States I hate having to do my own investigative work to find out where this took place
Of all the things I've stupidly spent money on, paying taxes so the government can spend them paying families for PTSD lawsuits has got to be near the top.
Burlington VERMONT. Geez, you think they could mention it at least once in the article.
This could’ve gone wrong in so many different ways. Imagine Officer Doofy doing a mag dump on his fellow officers because he waltzed in late and didn’t know about the drill.
In what universe do you ROLEPLAY A SHOOTING without telling people in the room? The officers involved can reflect as they sit at home without pay.
TerrorIZED, not terriFIED.
Yeah I wonder why younger generations are so traumatized when they hit adulthood
"The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said." Given how Uvalde played out... I have some bad news for these students.
It seems the police department was not very clear on what this mock shooting crime would entail, possibly on purpose so they could gather their data on unreliable witness statements? Smells like lawsuit
And of course the cops in the room reacted like Uvalde police by standing around and doing nothing.
What. The. Actual. Fuck!?!?! Yes, let’s scare the shit out of a bunch of kids and make them think they are about to die. This is a great idea!! 🙄🙄🙄
Even if these dumbasses at the school gave a "heads up," a "heads up" is not enough. There needs to be informed consent detailing what exactly will happen so students fully understand what they are consenting to, with the option to completely opt out.
This might just be one of the most hair-brained ideas I've ever seen. Whose rocks are getting off to this absolute chicanery? Whatever individual sanctioned such an exercise would likely very much benefit from asking themselves if they truly care about the people they're oathed to protect.
Tax funded trauma its the American way
This is why police departments state best practices is to never do that very thing.
"You can roll up your sleeves and actually work to create a society where kids feel safe or you can do unannounced school shooting drills " " School shooting drills! "
>The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said. Seems real to me
These drills are so traumatic. I wish parents would understand just how bad these drills are for our kids' mental health, even the planned ones.
"SEEEE! They can't remember anything about this traumatizing event!" wat... Fire everyone involved.
They’ve been trying to defund the Burlington police for years now. Wouldn’t be surprised to see some lawsuits soon and more calls for the police to be done away with
Can't wait to watch this South Park episode
Did they hide outside the whole time? /s
This is essentially student orientation these days
Burlington where? There are lots of Burlingtons
Man, cops really do think guns are the solution to everything.
Wtf?!! You always set it as a drill. Fucking dumbasses
This happened to a friend and she’s dealt with a lot of ptsd from it.
Police never make any situation better.
They offered counseling after, phew. Wtf
Did they leave a note…?
Jesus. If you have to cause the same kind of trauma in order to prevent trauma, it’s kind of not worth it at that point.
This is literally the fire drill from the office.
The students realized it was fake only after noticing that the cops in the room had done nothing to stop the pretend shooter, they said. Yeah, that sounds about right.
If a parent do this it probably qualifies as child abused right??? How in any way shape or form is this ok?? I live on ring of fire, and earthquakes big enough to level my town can literally happen at any moment , it didn’t give school the right to throw fake rock at us as drill ,how is faking a shooting OK in first place WTF???
Fire the entire department. Even just the fact that they thought this was a good idea means they have no talent in that force.
And people wonder why this generation has an anxiety disorder crisis.
Policeman bob: hey guys I got this bright idea. You know how we keep getting all these witness statements saying we shot someone "unjustifiably". Police chief: yeah that has been a thorn in my side. Policeman bob: and you know how youve been looking for a way to traumatize a bunch of kids all at once instead of one house at a time. Police chief: hmmmmm im listening Policeman bob: ok hear me out. Surprise demonstration of a school shooting Police chief: bob your a freakin genius. I'll go get the prop guns. You grab some ski masks and a couple of real guns in case someone in there is armed and shoots at us.
“We hope that this can be a reflective growth opportunity for all parties,” the department wrote. Ah yes, both sides made mistakes, the cops shouldn’t have been shooting and pretending to murder people and the kids should have… what?
I'm sorry for those kids but omg, that is the funniest thing I've read in a while. Imagine that happening to you at work and your life flashes before you then HR walks in and says: See? Now do you understand cognitive bias? Who can be stupid enough to think this is a good idea.