Danville Police have been conducting a series of drills this week simulating an armed intruder getting into Danville High School. It was only a drill, but it is something the Danville Police Commander Christopher Yates says students have taken very seriously. ”They take it with the proper perspective,” said Yates. ”They understand that better to prepare for an event such as that – they would be able to respond appropriately.”
Commander Yates added this week’s training is not a knee-jerk reaction to an incident in the news. Instead, he says Danville High School has been pro-active over the past ten years, preparing for what they hope will never happen. He adds the drills this week have been different than what was done in the past. ”What we’re doing, we went from our previous type of training for Critical Incident Response, and we switched over to an ALICE program in process. And what we’re doing now is – we had trained the teaching staff, and now we’re including students with some of the training and the drills.”
Danville High School Principal Kimberly Norton agreed that this week’s drills have been different than those carried out previously. She explained what has changed. ”Previously it would be if you did a hard lock-down, you would have the door locked, you would have the lights out, and you would hunker down under desks. And then we evolved from that and students could flee. But this is a different approach – that you alert everyone what’s going on, you lock-down, you inform, you counter-act, and you evacuate. So there’s more steps to this type of drill,” said Norton.
Norton says the drills this week have allowed school officials to discover some areas where improvement is needed. ”We’ve learned a lot from the drills. It informs us if there’s classrooms that need a better sound system, you know, if they’re not hearing the announcements well. Or if there’s doors that need to be more secure, we’ve been able to identify those key areas so we can improve that immediately,” said Norton during an interview with VermilionCoutyFirst.com News.
Norton adds students at Danville High have been good about relaying information to the school’s resource officer about potential threats. ”We do hear a lot from our students,” said Norton. ”Social media even plays a big part in that. So our students are doing a really good job letting us know if there’s things that we need to be concerned about. And we want to continue to have that message that if they see something – say something, so that we can be aware and followup before anything critical can happen.”
Danville Police Officer Beth Damilano agrees that students have been doing a good job relaying information to the SRO (School Resource Officer). ‘’They know we’re going to help them take care of it,’’ said Damilano. ‘’We want them to feel confident and prepared,’’ she added.
