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The recent shootings at Northern Illinois University have underlined continuing concerns about public safety on open campuses. Officials at PCC have been working to respond to those concerns, with several changes in policy debuting this semester.Last week the Associated Students issued a resolution calling for PCC to allow properly trained campus officers to carry firearms. This action reverses the position the AS took last year, even though the current executive board includes several of the same members.

“I think I was na’ve before,” said Adam Kratt, currently AS vice president for external affairs. “As elected officials, you have to respond to considerations of student safety.”

Student Affairs adviser Rebecca Cobb says she hears of similar concerns from many other community colleges. “Students want to know that they’re safe on campus,” she said. “There’s a lot of fear.” Cobb said she hopes that better communication will allay those fears as the campus works to improve public safety.

Kindred Murillo, vice president of administrative services, plans for PCC to begin holding emergency response drills as soon as this semester, much like the fire drills held in many other schools. Her goal is for key people across campus to be trained for several kinds of emergencies, and for their responses to be practiced at random times each semester. Their first exercise will be a tabletop simulation of post-earthquake decision-making.

Murillo is currently forming a task force to investigate the need for firearms for campus police, ultimately reporting its recommendation to the Board of Trustees. In January she requested representatives from several PCC constituencies, but so far few have replied. She expects the task force to meet before spring break, and hopes to have its recommendation ready before summer.

Its conclusions will have been long awaited. Although several board members have privately expressed opinions about the arming of campus officers, over the last few decades the Board of Trustees has never voted on the issue.

PCC continues to implement its overall critical incident response plan, anticipating contingencies from kitchen fires to terrorist attacks. But Lt. Brad Young, college safety supervisor, said, “Our emergency playbook has a chapter missing.” How are campus police to respond in the event of a gunman at PCC?

“We’re still operating pre-Columbine,” said Peter Michael, chief of police and safety services. The shootings on that campus changed the thinking of police departments around the country, he said.

At Columbine, officers followed what was then standard procedure. They contained the building, keeping people away while police assembled their forces for intervention. Meanwhile, inside the building, the body count climbed.

Police departments later realized that quick action by a handful of officers would have saved many lives. They developed a post-Columbine protocol of rapid deployment for the active shooter scenario, in which the armed officers first at the scene plan and implement immediate intervention to remove an ongoing threat.

With PCC’s current policy of unarmed officers, Young said it would be reckless for them to adopt such a protocol. “I can’t send an officer into a hot zone,” he said.

Right now, Michael said, “We’re gonna say ‘Hang in there. Pasadena Police Department is coming.'” This passive approach disturbs many officers. “It’s not in a police officer’s nature not to respond,” he said

Kratt anticipates a public forum this semester to open further discussion of this topic among the PCC community. Michael said he would be glad to address such a forum, believing the public needs to become more involved.

Michael observed that only 2,300 people have signed up so far for Alert-U (www.alertu.org/pcc), PCC’s text-message emergency alert system, although doing so could save lives during a variety of emergencies. Most people won’t start preparing for disaster until they become a victim, but PCC needs to become proactive, he said. “How many buildings burnt down before every city required fire sprinklers?

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