By Spencer Gisser
You are in class when you hear gunfire coming from the hallway. School alarms go off, indicating a shooter on campus. There is little time before the shooter will get to your classroom. What happens?
This is the question that Head of Security Jim Crawford is considering.
In preparing for this hypothetical situation, he has proposed adopting the A.L.I.C.E. system to enhance the current lockdown system.
A.L.I.C.E. stands for alert, lockdown, information, counter and evacuation. The system was developed to deal with “active shooters,” shooters who actively pursue their targets.
To prepare for using the A.L.I.C.E. system, Crawford and his security team spent one week learing to use the system.
The Prefect Council will be trained to use the system and will provide feedback for the school administration to further assess whether the school should adopt the system or not.
If the school adopts the system, it will be the first school on the West Coast to do so.
The current lockdown system, in which students go into classrooms and stay low under the windows, is geared towards making students and teachers small and thus hard to hit.
The A.L.I.C.E. system has these elements, but is also geared towards putting students and teachers “in charge of their own destiny” during the interval when security teams are not yet able to reach the shooter, Crawford said.
Under this proposed system, students and teachers would do whatever is possible to protect themselves, such as barricading doors or attacking the shooter, until security teams arrive.
The response time for the Los Angeles Police Department is 11 minutes, whereas CJL teams can get anywhere on campus in just one minute, Crawford said.
Crawford believes that students can assume leadership in a crisis.
Many colleges are taking similar action â Pierce College in Woodland Hills held an active shooter simulation, and Binghamton University in New York has a similar program.
