On October 8th, Logan County Schools conducted an active threat drill in the Logan attendance area of schools. The "inmate" was detained within three minutes of "reports" of a jail transport van crashing in a multiple vehicle wreck.
A. M. Stone | WVOW News
LOGAN The active threat drill in Logan County Schools this past week was deemed a success by school leaders.
The active threat drill was conducted in the Logan attendance area of the county school system. Participating schools included Logan High, Logan Middle, Logan Elementary, Omar Elementary, Verdunville Elementary, Holden Elementary, Justice Elementary schools and the Ralph R. Willis Career and Technical Center.
AThe active threat drill was planned and conducted for Tuesday, October eighth. That evening, at a meeting of the Logan County Board of Education, Deputy Superintendent Josh Brumfield revealed publicly the simulated threat scenario used for the drill.
Brumfield said the drill began at approximately 9:56 a.m. Tuesday with a call from the Logan County 911. The simulation revolved around traffic accident at the intersection of WV 44 and WV 73 in Logan. Like something out of a Halloween movie, a regional jail transport van was reported involved in a multiple vehicle collision and one inmate escaped. Of course, the inmate was considered dangerous and possibly armed.
“I gave that exact message to the eight schools involved in the threat drill,” Brumfield said during the meeting.
Brumfield said that only the day of the drill was disclosed to the public. The time of the drill and the specific simulated threat was withheld. Moreover, Brumfield said a group of individuals from the central office of the Logan County Schools were at each school to observe how each school handled and reacted to the threat.
“What they do is they follow the principal and they document every single thing that the principal does and the staff does,” Brumfield said. “That way, we’re able to get an objective point of view. Again, none of it is punitive. Certainly, we found out today a lot of thing we did right. We found things we could do better, in terms of communication.”
Lieutenant Freddie Ferrell of the Logan County Sheriff’s office dressed in an orange regional jail outfit and was sequestered in the wrestling room of the facilities building at the Willis-Nisbet football stadium. The “inmate” was instructed to remain hidden until ten minutes after ten o’clock. His mission was to make it inside Logan Middle School.
“He never got in the building,” Brumfield said. In fact, Brumfield said the “inmate” was detained by the Logan Middle School Resource Officer with the sheriff’s department, Joe Lyal.
“We were very impressed with Logan Middle School,” Brumfield said. “They were able to spot the individual and Mr. Lyal detained the gentleman within three minutes. We were very impressed with their actions. Are there things we could do better? Obviously, that’s why we do these drills. It’s practice.”
There are very real reasons why these drills are necessary. Just last month, Chapmanville Regional High School was the subject of a massive response from law enforcement after an erroneous call to Logan County 911 reported an active threat that did not exist. On September thirteenth, Chapmanville Regional’s School Resource Officer Derrick Miller was performing his regular morning routine at the High School when he said he received a phone call from another officer alleging that an active shooter was either inside or outside of the school property. Miller said that’s when his training kicked in.
“I ran by the assistant principal's office and I said, ‘initiate lockdown.’ And she’s like ‘what,’ and I was like, ‘initiate lockdown,’ and it was real for her at that moment too,” Deputy Miller told WVOW’s Aaron Stone. “So we did go into lockdown.”
“I went outside. I didn’t see anything or hear anything outside and, by that time, you know, I’m coming back inside to clear my building. I do a training at the state level for the prevention resource officers. I tell them in that training that statistics show that within three minutes, you know your backup’s going to arrive, and that day – even though it was Friday the 13th – everything worked out great for me. I had two officers show up on scene within the first three minutes; we’re inside the school clearing the school, trying to find this reported threat,” he said.
Brian Brown with the Capitol Police Safety Unit says law enforcement agencies statewide have been working to create a more unified approach to handling possible safety threats to the state’s schools. Part of that unified approach, according to Brown, involves consolidating as many reports of school safety threats into one place as possible. He says the state uses an app, which is available for free on every mobile app store, called “See Something, Send Something.”
“Once you get on the ‘See Something, Send Something’ app, you can go to a tab that says ‘school threat or safety issue,’ and you click into that and it’s going to give you an opportunity there to type in a school safety threat or a school safety issue that may be going on at a local school,” he told WVOW.
More threat drills are planned. Deputy Superintendent Brumfield said the next target date for an active threat is for sometime in December in the Man area.
Logan County Superintendent Jeff Huffman said Brumfield was asked to go to Mason County Schools to provide a training for them based on the processes in place in Logan County.
“I think it is extremely important,” Huffman said. “It puts people in situations. They don’t know what those situations are. It allows them, as well as us, to measure their reactions. It’s just as important for them to learn what they did very well, and what they can do better.”
“It may act as a deterrent,” Logan County Schools President Tony Dean Said during the board meeting on Tuesday. “I think it’s fantastic that we’re implementing these. We’re kind of a the fore-front because you don’t hear about other school systems doing these county-wide.”
PHOTO | Logan County Schools