Police Arrest Student in School Attack (Germany)

[Questor]

Hey guys?

Lockdowns address more circumstances than just "Shooter on campus".

My guess would be that most lockdowns are in response to "shooter near campus". In that situation, you would want to get the kids inside so that someone can't just grab a hostage off a field. In that situation, you would also definitely not want to discharge thousands of kids onto the street.

You can also use a lockdown with an intruder on campus, as the lockdown gives the police the ability to methodically search everyone on campus.

[Death from the Sea]

Fair enough. I see the value in saving at least some lives.

How fast can police tend to scramble in these situations? I suppose it would be fast but that is another factor in it as if the police arrive fast than running away from a shooter may result in less deaths due to the police giving the hypothetical attacker less time to gun down the students.

once the police are advised, they will be running hot (lights and sirens) to the scene, but response times will vary as it depends on how far away they are when they get the word.

While a lock down can be useful in some scenarios, such as the shooter outside waiting to ambush, the chances are that the shooter will call in a bomb threat and wait for the standard evacuation plan to bring him his victims. After all during school hours there is not a large number of students roaming outside the buildings for such a scenario to kick off and alert everyone.

Sadly the lock down has become the one answer most schools use because they want simple emergency plans. My mom just retired from 23 years of teaching this past May and she saw a few changes to the emergency plans over the years, all of which are knee jerk reactions to a specific incident and the plan is not universal.

The lock down does have it's uses, they are just very few.

I liken the lock down to the old policy airlines had for telling passengers to just cooperate with hijackers. Just hunker down and hope they don't do anything bad or come for you. No real smart, as you are just giving too much power to the shooter.

As far as the police searching for an intruder, true a lock down would make that easier but in the mean time, the intruder has until the police arrive to do what ever he/she wants and all the kids/faculty there to be their potential victims.