Police Chief Bobby Helmers was interviewed by the Sting on August 31 to answer many questions on school safety. Chief Helmers has extended experience regarding safety and training for dangerous situations considering the fact that he has twenty years experience being a police officer and prior to that being a flight EMT and even prior to that serving five years in the military. Most importantly, Chief Helmers is an active shooter safety instructor and is constantly constructing more ideas on how to keep our local schools protected. His main two words of advice were, “Always keep the windows covered and the doors locked.” He also shared the impactful knowledge that the majority of school shootings occur in one room which is frighteningly always an unlocked one.
Chief Helmers let us all know that the Chester police department’s top priority in the event of a school shooting is to get inside the building and compromise the intruder and deliver as much first aid as needed. Speed is crucial in a scenario like this because according to Chief Helmers the devastation of school shootings occurs in a short time frame of two to three minutes on average. Luckily, our Chester police officers are specially trained many times a year on specifically how to handle an occurrence such as this in a proper manner and many other Chester policemen are active shooter safety instructors like Chief Helmers. When asked what he thought the Chester police department learned from the shooting in Uvalde, Texas Chief Helmers responded, “Absolutely nothing.” He informed us that the Chester police are well trained to handle a tragedy like that in an urgent manner and called the Uvalde police chief Pete Arredondo, in his own words, a “coward that should be fired.”
“Be alert even when outside of school,” is another helpful piece of advice given by Chief Helmers. He encouraged all of us to avoid risky situations and to always be aware of our surroundings by identifying where all possible exits are or heavy objects that could be launched at a perpetrator if need be. Chief Helmers has even designed his own tactic for entering the high school for his daily walkthroughs which is that he never comes through the same door. This makes it impossible to predict where police would enter during a dangerous situation.
The Chester police department plans to host an active shooter drill in the high school that includes students as well as teachers. The drills could potentially be very triggering but over time would relieve more anxiety than they ever could give. The four E’s is the base plan given to instruct students those E’s being: 1. Educate: teach students and teachers on how they can handle these situations the best they can, 2. Evade: Stay out of harm’s way to the absolute best of your ability, 3. Escape: Flee is able to or when necessary, and 4. Engage: In the worst case having to defend yourself from the intruder. Metal detectors have been discussed as a useful tool for the school to possibly utilize someday that would go along with the construction of a newer school building.