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Preparing
schools for disaster
Cooper’s
push to prepare schools to respond to an emergency crisis such as a
school
shooting is working. Since the launch of the Critical Incident Response
Kit to
every public, private and charter school across the state, more than
1,400
schools have been trained to respond to an emergency.
His plan, the Critical
Incident Response Kit, was recognized by the US Department of Education
as one
of only three promising examples of school emergency responses in the
nation.
Training
law enforcement officers to stop an ongoing assault
Cooper’s
work has changed the way law enforcement officers respond to a
shooting. Before
the Columbine high school incident, local law enforcement first
responded by
“surrounding and containing” events until the
arrival of a SWAT team.
Cooper
has made available to all local law enforcement agencies training in
the Rapid
Deployment technique, which teaches law enforcement officers how to
effectively
locate and subdue the active shooter. Today, hundreds of law
enforcement
agencies have been trained in this technique.
In
Orange
County
a School
Resource Officer who’d been trained in technique successfully
subdued a teenager
who fired a weapon into a high school. In Cleveland
County,
when a
student fired a semi-automatic in a middle school, the school followed
the
response plan. A Craven
County
high school
successfully carried out the plan after three students reported seeing
a gunman
in the parking lot.
Safe
college campuses
After the Virginia Tech
shooting, Cooper appointed
and directed a statewide task force to take the same comprehensive
approach to
college campuses public and private. The members are working toward
better
prevention, response and recovery methods across the state.
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