SWAT team was training at time of shootings

I wasn't aware of this. Interesting.

SWAT team was training at time of shootings - Cleveland Metro News – The Latest Breaking News, Photos and Stories from The Plain Dealer

SWAT team was training at time of shootings
Posted by Gabriel Baird October 12, 2007 11:53AM
Categories: Impact, School shooting

Cleveland police's SWAT Team was training patrol officers to respond to school shootings when they got word that a student was on a rampage at SuccessTech High School.
• Review complete Plain Dealer coverage of the shooting.By the time they reached the school, the shooter was already down and patrol officers from the 3rd District already had secured the building. And that is exactly how it is supposed to happen under the department's training, said Lt. Bernard Barabas, the long-time SWAT leader.

The training, Barabas said, is specifically designed for school shootings and even begins with lessons learned from the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.

The department, however, has not addressed Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Stephen Loomis' complaint that the SWAT Team was not called to the scene until nearly an hour after the first 9-1-1 call. Loomis said this decision put officers in danger. He points back to last year when Detective A.J. Schroeder was shot and killed while serving a warrant. Loomis argues that if SWAT officers had been there with their heavy body armor and shields, Schroeder would still be alive.

Barabas said most of those 3rd District officers had already been through the training and used it as they searched for the Success Tech shooter -- a search that ended with them finding the body of 14-year-old Asa Coon, who had committed suicide after shooting two teachers and two students.

Cleveland police, like those from other departments around the country, have changed the way they respond to active shooters since Columbine, said Sgt. Dan Galmarini, a SWAT leader and former police spokesman.

The old training was to form a perimeter before going in. However, law enforcement has concluded that any delay in the response gives mass-murderers time to take more lives. Now, the first officers on the scene are directed to go after the shooter immediately.

The training the SWAT Team is giving the department's officers teaches them how to use safe tactics when engaging such a threat. When the team arrived at SuccessTech Thursday, the shooter was dead, but police were not sure that there was not another shooter inside.

SWAT Team member Jose Delgado was part of the heavily armored crew that went room to room in the school. Well over an hour after the shooter was dead, they were still finding students and teachers hiding in locked rooms.

When they opened one room, the teachers were in front of the door with their bodies between their students and any shooters that may have tried to threaten the kids' lives.

"I told them that they did an excellent job," Delgado said.