IN-DEPTH SPECIAL: Are U.S. schools safe? INTERACTIVE Images of the 'taking back' of Columbine High Recent school shootings

August 18, 1999
Web posted at: 4:26 a.m. EDT (0826 GMT)

In this story: At Columbine, SWAT teams gingerly walked halls Students were barricaded in closets '1 bleeding to death' No textbook for tragedy RELATED STORIES, SITES

LITTLETON, Colorado -- In the four months since the massacre at Columbine High School, police across the country have begun to alter training procedures based on lessons learned from the most deadly school shooting in U.S. history, to better prepare for the worst-case scenario.

"Columbine was a big wakeup call for a lot of people," said Dave Klinger, a University of Missouri professor who oversees a federally-funded study of the use of forces by SWAT teams.

"It is no longer unpredictable that some school, somewhere is going to be assaulted by some sort of lunatic, so you'd better prepare for it."

The situation was new -- two teen-aged gunmen armed with assault weapons, ammunition and pipe bombs had entered Columbine and opened fire. Some students were shot. Others were trapped in the school with the gunmen.

Fifteen people died last April, including the gunmen.

At a recent four-day police seminar in Palm Beach, Florida, participants reenacted the Columbine tragedy, using fake blood, screaming students, screeching fire alarms and paint-ball guns.

In Austin, Texas, the police department recently started a program called Homicide in Progress for officers who are among the first to respond, said Paul Ford, a senior police officer and SWAT team member.

"It teaches them to recognize situations like Columbine, and give the officers some options on what they can do ... whether it is rescuing victims or going directly to the source of the threat," he said.

"We don't want to wait until it happens here to start training. We're trying be proactive."

At Columbine, police and emergency response crews descended on the school within minutes of 911 calls.

Lt. Terry Manwaring, a Jefferson County SWAT team commander who arrived within 12 minutes, found some students who quickly sketched a layout of the school.

A hastily assembled team of 10 officers from three agencies approached the building 20 minutes later, using a fire truck as a shield, Manwaring said.

During the next 11/2 hours, three SWAT teams made up of nearly 50 officers from four jurisdictions gingerly walked through debris-filled hallways as explosions echoed, fire alarms blared, water flowed from sprinkler systems and emergency strobe lights flashed.

They found hundreds of terrorized students, many barricaded in classrooms and closets.

Manwaring said they received a lot of false information: there were as many as eight gunmen; snipers were on the roof; killers were hiding in ceilings or in heating ducts or trying to mingle with escaping students.

The officers agree one of their biggest problems was communication because different agencies operated on radios set on different frequencies.

At times, vital information did not reach crews inside the school. Critics have said that may have contributed to the death of Dave Sanders, the only teacher killed in the rampage.

A student placed a sign that said "1 bleeding to death" in a window and it was spotted by police before noon. No one reached Sanders until after 3 p.m.

Despite the criticism, Ron McCarthy, who owns a company that specializes in training SWAT team members, said he was amazed at how well the Jefferson County officers performed, given the circumstances.

"Do I think they can respond better, now that this has happened? Sure," he said. "As bad as your heart breaks for kids in so much pain and trouble, you're going to have to run right past them and to the shooters."

"This went beyond the worst case scenario for a SWAT team," added Larry Glick, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

"What it taught was that an incident as large as Columbine or as devastating needs to be planned for."

Questions followed the Columbine tragedy. Should officers have moved through the building faster? Should they have focused more on finding the gunmen than on helping the injured?

There were no set guidelines, no handbook to follow.

"When you're dealing with a case like Columbine, there is no textbook to fall back on," said Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis. "We couldn't go on the scene and say, `Last time, we had a situation like this.'

"You're kind of just flying by the seat of your pants."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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