Schaumburg police chief affirms region's active-shooter preparedness
In the wake of recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, Schaumburg's police and fire chiefs Thursday addressed the village's public safety committee on both Schaumburg's and the region's preparedness for such an event in various types of environments.
Schaumburg Police Chief Bill Wolf said it's a topic he's been asked about a lot in the past few weeks.
He and Fire Chief Jim Walters spoke to the trustees on the committee about it after delivering their annual reports on the volume and nature of their department's calls.
Wolf said active-shooter training is done with every officer at the academy and reality-based training with the police department. School Resource Officers receive additional training and are prepared to stop such threats without waiting for other officers to arrive.
Though schools are required by law to practice drills, the schools in Schaumburg have gone far beyond the minimum levels in assisting police and paramedics with the large-scale response drills they've engaged in, Wolf said.
Walters added that the days of paramedics waiting for an entire building to be secured before going in are over. With police assistance, they will go to individual secured areas to assist the wounded as soon as possible, he said.
The same kind of drills have been done in a variety of other locations within the village as well, including at Woodfield Mall and a number of churches in the village.
Walters said a September 2019 incident involving a man driving an SUV through the Sears store and into Woodfield Mall demonstrated the effectiveness of the earlier training when the call initially came in as an active shooter.
Wolf said the driver was in custody and the scene secured in minutes, even as panicked calls continued to be made from other areas of the mall.
Though Schaumburg is part of a large multijurisdictional Special Weapons and Tactics team through the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System that would be dispatched to an active shooter event, every officer on the scene earlier is trained not to await the arrival of that team before acting, Wolf said.
The Columbine High School shooting in 1999 was a big wake-up call for police departments and how they respond to such events, he added. He and Deputy Chief Kristine Provenzano have attended debriefings on more recent mass shootings like the October 2017 one in Las Vegas and the February 2019 one in Aurora.
"Even when police officers did a good job, there are important lessons to be learned," Wolf said.
Trustees asked him about the stated desire of some victimized teachers in Uvalde to not return unarmed.
Wolf said local schools don't allow teachers to carry weapons. The extensive training police officers receive on how and when to use their guns also includes when not to use them.
"That's a bit of a slippery slope," he said of the prospect of arming teachers.
Though his report was largely on Schaumburg itself, Wolf said a similar level of preparedness exists across the region. While not every community may have exactly the same resources, all the officer training is the same these days and that's the most important thing, he said.