Four days after the Newton Conn. tragedy that in December took the lives of 20 young children and six adult staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Debbie Flores met with principals, district staff and the Gilroy Police Department to review the district’s Code Red (lockdown) procedures, discuss safety protocol upgrades and identify the immediate next steps required to heighten security at Gilroy school sites.
“The tragedy in Connecticut has caused us to dig deeper,” said Flores during her Feb. 7 superintendent’s report. “We will find the money for this critical task.”
Gilroy Police Captain Denise Turner says GPD and police departments across the nation established “Active Shooter Protocols” back in 1999 after the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado. Those protocols and training have been adopted by GPD and are now in place throughout Gilroy.
“It used to be that when police responded to a shooter or hostage situation, the police would wait for the SWAT team and hostage negotiators to arrive before taking any action,” Turner explained. “Now, police have had common training to handle shooter situations. We’re now prepared to act immediately after we arrive on scene.”
On Jan. 8, GPD inspected all 14 GUSD school sites, compiling information on improving site security in the event of an armed intruder.
“The biggest difference now is the training and the mindset of officers, and that they can eliminate the barrier of time between being alerted to an incident and taking action to neutralize a shooter,” Turner explained. “We have also been working with Gilroy Gardens, establishing drills and protocols for an active shooter incident or other threat that could potentially happen there.”
Flores added, “all this (upgrading security) is harder than it sounds, but I am especially passionate about this issue. I am determined to get this done to ensure safety for all 11,000 GUSD students and staff.”
There are 11 “no cost” as well as “ideal” actions GUSD plans to take as soon as possible. The top three “no cost” measures include the creation of a single entry for each site by locking all other ways into a school, universal GUSD name tags to identify approved visitors and upping the frequency of Code Red drills at each school site.
One significant, and potentially costly “ideal” measure identified by the GPD is the construction of wrought iron fence barriers around each campus that currently do not have any.
Flores says safety takes top priority and being ready is “job one.”
“Hopefully, we will never need to use any of this, but we must be prepared,” she said.
