Last week’s fatal shooting of a police officer at Virginia Tech is a stark reminder to all college campuses to evaluate their crisis management plans.
According to Robert Gatti, Vice President of Student Affairs, Otterbein will receive a report about the recent shooting once it is completed and will be able to evaluate any further training that needs to be done.
“I know from the original Virginia Tech (shooting), we got transcripts, looked at all the information and that’s when we trained with WPD. And we have been training with WPD on these situations,” Gatti said.
Police chief Larry Banaszak echoed Gatti’s plan of further campus shooter training, both within the OPD and with campus using OPD’s annual “Response to Campus Shooters” exercise.
Campus administration previously cited the original Virginia Tech campus shooting as a reason why the Otterbein Security Department needed to receive training to become a police force.
“We had a situation four-five years ago, where there was an armed robbery over at Dunlap-King, Christmas Eve, and the officer was coming around the science building, and he couldn’t have done anything,” Gatti said. “So as we’ve said, it provides the police department with the tools to protect our students.”
Banaszak also said in an email, though, that he believes just training the police force isn’t enough to ensure safety on campus.
“Notice the large numbers of shootings over the years. Notice how many people have been shot and died on campus and in our schools throughout the country. Given that, ask yourself, why isn’t OPD’s ‘Response to Campus Shooter’ mandatory training for all students, faculty and staff?”
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