Police using school for weekend active shooter training
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (Aug. 19, 2022) – The city’s police officers will be spending the weekend learning the layout of the high school and preparing to respond to any threats that might arise there.
The police department is holding active shooter training in the building Saturday and Sunday from 8 am to 5 pm. Chief Mike Goodwin says they’ll have volunteers there posing as students to get officers ready for what they might encounter if there were an actual shooter.
“We’ve done it in the past years ago, but with the current situation in the country and the shootings going on and then what happened down in Uvalde, we decided to bring this back to the top of our training list and work on this a little bit.”
Ray Avenue will be closed in front of the school while the training is occurring. Goodwin says people are welcome to watch from across the street but there’s not going to be much to see once officers get inside the building.
“You’re not really probably going to hear anything either other than maybe kids screaming as they would run out of the building to alert the officer that something happened in there, but will probably will be a very uneventful thing. If somebody wants to stand out and watch, they certainly can. I just don’t believe they’re going to see anything that’s really worthwhile.”
New Philadelphia students go back to school this coming Wednesday.