On Tuesday, December 10th, just a few days prior to the anniversary of the deadly school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year, our Federation hosted “Seconds Count,” a K-12 active shooter response training in conjunction with the LAPD and Builders of Jewish Education. A second training takes place at the New Community Jewish High School in West Hills this Thursday, Dec. 12th.
Most school active shooter incidents are over in 10 minutes or less, so the school’s response to such an event is critical. Seconds count in saving lives. The training included: Five ways to prevent an active shooter incident at your school; What to do during an active shooter event on campus; Tips for handling the aftermath of a violent event on campus; and “Hands on” lockdown drills in a real-life classroom environment.
Attendees for this week’s training sessions include heads of schools, security personnel, and other administrative staff from a wide cross section of Jewish organizations in our community. The interactive format of the training allowed opportunities for the participants to share best practices from their institutions, while learning about simple and inexpensive preventive security measures such as having classroom doors lock from the inside in order to protect students from an attack. Additional discussion included how to perform lockdown drills, accounting for students during an incident, how to communicate with other staff during a lockdown, and even making sure that that the school’s PA systems were adequate to communicate with all on campus about what may be happening.
The training was conducted by Sergeant Cathy Riggs of the LAPD Topanga Area Training Cadre and her team, and was followed by a one-hour presentation on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) “Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship” presented by Mark Genatempo of Secure Community Network.
The trainings and course materials were provided free of charge are part of the work of our Federation’s Community Security Initiative which represents the security-related interests of Jewish organizations throughout Los Angeles.
For more information, contact CSI@JewishLA.org.
