GORHAM – In was a grim scene that looked and sounded real.

Guns drawn, officers Monday burst into an old Gorham school after an alarm triggered, shots rang out, bodies of students were strewn in rooms and halls, spent ammo shells littered the floor, and students screamed.

“You come out with your hands up,” shouted a police officer, who located a shooting suspect in a classroom.

Thankfully, there was no shooter. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, along with Gorham and Windham police officers, this week conducted the latest tactical training at the former White Rock Elementary School on North Gorham Road.

Deputies and police officers were sharpening their skills for response in case of an actual school-shooting incident.

And, in a separate training on Tuesday, Gorham public safety personnel teamed up with University of Southern Maine police in a drill on the Gorham campus.

In both training exercises, conducted during school vacation, officers were drilled in tactics.

Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said on Tuesday law enforcement previously would wait for a tactical team to arrive at a school-shooting incident before swinging into action.

“The reality is, we can’t wait,” Joyce said. “Time is the essence.”

Tactics have changed since the days of the shooting incident in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 12 students and a teacher were murdered and many more injured. Now, a deputy or police officer on a routine patrol would likely be the first responder in a real-life school-shooting situation.

“Take out the threat as soon as possible,” Joyce said.

So the exercises this week focused on training individual officers, along with the joint interaction of departments.

“This is training officers on the road for immediate action,” Deputy Joe Schnupp, community service officer for the sheriff’s department, said in a break between drills at White Rock school, which closed in 2011.

All Gorham police officers were to attend the training at White Rock School. Gorham officers Todd Gagnon and Paul Dubay trained there Monday morning and were among about 16 officers in the mock scenario.

“In the real world, if the call goes out, these guys answer the call,” Schnupp said.

Detective Brian Ackerman of the sheriff’s department headed up a team of six instructors at this week’s training at the former school.

“Our trainers are highly experienced swat team members,” said Capt. Shawn O’Leary, who is in charge of all training for the sheriff’s office.

Training isn’t new for officers and deputies. But, O’Leary said, the incident in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., prompted this week’s review.

“We’ve been training before Columbine,” Schnupp said. “It’s not new for us.”

Cheverus High School sophomore Matt O’Leary said he volunteered to participate in the training because he wondered what would happen.

“It definitely seems like a real thing,” Matt O’Leary said in a school hallway during a break. “One girl was really good at fake crying.”

Sarah Schnupp of Gorham, a freshman at Catherine McAuley High School in Portland, agreed the training was realistic.

“I think it’s valuable to everybody,” she said. “Kids know what to expect in a real-life scenario.”

The two were among 30 volunteers students from area high schools, in addition to Saint Joseph’s College, Southern Maine Community College and Kaplan University, on hand Monday to participate in the exercise.

Training at a real school with real students was beneficial, law enforcement officers said. Joyce said having students involved increased the “level of stress” on officers and created what he called “muscle memory” for officers.

But, the department did receive some public criticism for involving the students, many of whom are children of deputies and police officers.

Instructors were conscious of safety. The shots heard were blanks fired in a classroom without students present and officers did not have live weapons. In a firing exercise with non-lethal training ammunition, kids were sequestered in a classroom far from the firing, but the noise reverberated right through the building.

The young people present on Monday were rewarded for their involvement with a pizza lunch.

“You guys did a wonderful job,” Joe Schnupp told the students gathered in a classroom.

And O’Leary also offered praise – they were “very respectful.”

The week’s training cost the sheriff’s department $5,000. The town of Gorham donated use of the building.

Schnupp said he was thankful for the opportunity to train in a school setting.

“It’s a great tool,” he said.

With guns drawn, police officers and county deputies train at the former White Rock Elementary School for a response in the event of a real-life school-shooting incident. 
Staff photo by Robert Lowell

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