Photos From Secaucus Police Active Shooter Drill At High School

SECAUCUS, NJ — The words nobody wants to hear:

"MVA. Car crashed into the school. Four males in black hoodies carrying rifles, making their way to the cafeteria."

And that was exactly the call that came over the police radio Friday morning when the Secaucus Police Department held its first-ever active shooter drill at the Secaucus High School/Middle School. School was closed all week; no students were in the building.

Under the command of Chief Dennis Miller, this is the first time SPD has ever done such a drill. It was an all-hands-on-deck simulation: Secaucus Fire Dept. was there, as was State Police. The Hudson County SWAT team monitored officers' response and gave feedback as to how they can improve.

The goal of the drills was to eliminate the shooter as quickly as possible, with the fewest causalities, said Chief Miller. Subscribe to Patch: https://patch.com/subscribe

"An active shooter is taking lives. Statistically, it has been shown they are not going to stop until they are killed or kill themselves," said Miller. "The whole agenda here is to contain and neutralize the threat or it will not stop."

Secaucus police ran through four different active shooter scenarios. Some officers played the roles of the shooters, while other officers simulated they were injured, lying in the hallway. Other officers pretended to be students, while actual Secaucus school teachers also served as volunteers. There were even a few high school kids volunteering with their parents to make the scenario more realistic.

The officers used rubber bullets, but they fired at each while running through the drill, so they also wore face shields and body armor. The entire incident simulation was run under the command of Lt. Kim Elphick.

See dramatic video from Secaucus High School; for safety's sake, Patch has restricted this video to viewers 18 and above:

Also, for the first time ever, the Secaucus Police Dept. used brand-new technology where they could track in real time each officers' location in the school, using a tracking app called CRG Plans.

"What we learned after active shooter incidents is that the floor plans of these schools were often unreadable, if they were even accessible," said CRG founder Alex Carney, a former U.S. Marine. "A high school is a tactical nightmare to manage in a big incident. There are so many places for a shooter to hide and the responding officers don't know exactly where they are going, especially if they haven't been in the building many times."

His software mapped out the entire Secaucus High School. Once officers turned on GPS tracking on their department-issued phones, incident command could seem them all in real time, identified as a blue dot and their badge number moving through the school.

"So now command can much easier tell officers, meet at door six, meet at the cafeteria," explained Carney.

Secaucus is the first town in Hudson County to have the software; it was funded through Homeland Security grants and by the Board of Education.

Every Secaucus school, from the Millridge Pre-K to the high school, has an armed police officer on duty every single day school is in session. This was a request from Mayor Mike Gonnelli and the Council three years ago, after the Parkland school shooting where fourteen students and three teachers were killed.

Not every town in America has armed police officers in its schools; the idea remains controversial.

"When your child goes to school, would you rather a cop be at the front door waiting? I think the answer is yes," said Miller.

What if a school shooting happens in real life in Secaucus?

"Our initial officers can be here in under three minutes," said one unnamed officer. "Back-up can be here in five."

And also as would happen in real life, Hudson Regional EMS was there and laid out a triage area to treat the wounded: Green for those with the most minor injuries, yellow for moderate, red for the most critically injured and black for those who died or are going to die very soon.

"Injured" Secaucus officers laid on the tarps for a simulation of how EMS would respond.

"These colored tarps are the same exact ones that would be used in a real-life situation; they were used after the Boston Marathon bombing," said Dr. Howard Felderman, the medical doctor who oversees Hudson Regional EMS. "We would put someone who is not going to make it on the black tarp; for example, someone who was shot in the chest and is going to bleed out in minutes. It's very serious. But that's how it is."

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