A total of 60 to 70 members of the Brownwood Police and Fire Departments, Brown County Sheriff’s Office, Early Police Department, Lifeguard EMS, and Brownwood ISD personnel took part in Operation Safe Lion II Monday morning, a full-scale active shooter exercise at Brownwood High School, followed by a student and parent reunification at Brownwood Middle School.
“All we can do is try to simulate as close to realism as possible,” said Brownwood High School Resource Officer Fred Bastardo. “The only way to do that is to be able to do these kind of trainings. The training that we’re doing now, they’re going to fall back on and apply that in a real life situation. It’s the only way to build it, by doing it.”
Last summer, BISD and first responders ran a similar drill at Coggin Elementary.
“We have learned a lot from what happened last year to implement this year,” said BISD Director of Student Services Ginger Alford. “I’m real curious to see how everything plays out. We definitely had a list of things we would improve or implement from both how we do the lockdown to the reunification. It’s good to do a different campus this year, it gives us a lot of practice because we had a lot of conversations about being more prepared.”
Bastardo said of the importance of the drills, “In order for us to be able to save lives, we need to be able to enter the buildings, quickly neutralize the suspect, and treat any wounded that are there and get them medical help as quick as possible. The only way to be able to get fluent at this is to practice, and we’re hoping to do it yearly from here on out.”
Comparing this year’s exercise to last year, Bastardo said, “There’s little things we learned as far as having more keys to be able to enter the buildings themselves, there’s an increase in the amount of keys. The contact teams are able to form up a lot faster. I’m being able to get the buses where they need to be from the school side and direct them appropriately. All of that we improved on from last year, so that was good.”
Regarding the scenario for Monday’s drill, Bastardo said, “The subject followed a custodian into the cafeteria. When they came in, they immediately started shooting students and staff inside the cafeteria. It penetrated all the way into the middle of the campus near the ISS classroom. There was a school guardian actually on the campus and he engaged him in a gunfight. The school guardian was wounded, but so was the suspect. The suspect retreated into the ISS classroom, and a 911 call was made. They were able to come in and enter the room and subdue the suspect inside the room. He was actually shot in the leg, he was not killed, and they actually transported him to the hospital for treatment as well, prior to taking him to the jail.”
“Wounded” student volunteers in the simulation were taken either by ambulance or bus, depending on the severity of their injury, to Hendrick Medical Center-Brownwood. Evacuees were taken from the school cafeteria across Good Shepherd to the parking lot for the baseball and softball fields, then transported by bus to Brownwood Middle School, where they were reunited with their families.
As for the performance of the first responders, Bastardo said. “Overall, it went well. It could have gone better. They learned interesting things that I don’t think that they were thinking about before. We had a lot more injuries for this scenario than we’ve ever had in the past, so that was a little bit of adjustment for them, but I think they adjusted well. It was just a learning curve for them, but they’re going to get there.”
