On Thursday, January 15, 2015, Towson University conducted an emergency preparedness drill simulating a live active shooter situation at SECU Arena.
Members of the Towson University police department (TUPD), Baltimore County police department (BCPD), and university staff began the drill at approximately 1:30 p.m. with a simulated notification of an active shooter located in SECU Arena. Earlier in the day, between 6 a.m. and noon, TUPD and BCPD had conducted a full-scale training exercise at SECA Arena and Towson Center area of the athletic complex.
During the afternoon portion of the drill, the mock scenario was revealed to be multiple shooters on different levels of SECU Arena, each taking a hostage. There were report of nine persons injured, including a TUPD officer, and two persons killed. By 3 p.m. SECU Arena had been secured, one suspect had been captured and one was deceased, and both hostages were released relatively unharmed.
For nearly three hours Thursday afternoon, several members of the TUPD and representatives from various parts of the campus infrastructure — including student affairs, auxiliary services, facilities management, human resources, technology services, and communications and media relations — staffed the emergency operations center in the public safety building to manage the ongoing incident. Once the planned scenarios had been thoroughly tested, there was a short debriefing session involving all participants.
“I thought the exercise was very helpful,” said Associate Vice President for Public Safety and Chief of Police Bernie Gerst. “We learned a great deal and we will be better prepared in the event of a real emergency of this nature. I appreciate all the hard work of my staff who put this exercise together over the past several months, and I am appreciative of all those who took time out of their busy schedules to participate for three hours. It is very gratifying to see everyone taking this type of exercise so seriously.”
Administrative staff practiced emergency procedures for communicating important information internally, to the TU campus community, and to local residents and media via phone banks, news releases, social media, digital signage and press conferences. University staff members also simulated the set up of a family assistance center and a media information center on campus.
“I echo what Chief Gerst said, I learned a lot about how to best respond to an emergency situation on this campus,” said Ray Feldmann, director of communications and media relations. “I hope we never experience a situation at Towson like the one we trained for today, but if we do, I am confident we will be better equipped to handle it because of what we all learned today.”
