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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A gunman brandishing an automatic weapon fires a series of shots inside a university building bustling with students and faculty members, quickly filling the building with the smell of gunpowder and causing a panic as people duck into bathrooms and unlocked closets to hide from the danger.
But in this case, the shooter was firing blanks, and the people hiding from him were participants in a mock active shooter scenario with the Oklahoma City Police Department's tactical unit.
The exercises at Oklahoma City University's University Center Tuesday provided training for members of the police department's tactical team as well as for faculty and students, who got a glimpse of what the violent scenarios might be like.
"It can be a little bit of a stressful scenario," OCU Police Chief Bradd Brown said before the training program began. "We're real big on emergency preparedness. We want to see our strengths and weaknesses here on campus."
Brown, a retired Oklahoma City Police Department captain, said an active shooter scenario has never occurred on the private campus of about 3,500 students. But campus shootings have occurred elsewhere in the nation, including one last month that left a 19-year-old Seattle Pacific University student dead and two others wounded.
"We have a real good campus, a quiet campus," Brown said. "We'd like to keep it that way."
The sound of gunfire and the booming voices of police officers shouting commands can provide a realistic, "eye-opening experience" for faculty and students who participated in the exercises, Brown said.
"Doors open on the right!" a police officer pointing an unloaded handgun said to another who was following him as they slowly made their way down a university hallway and past Bruce Macella, who was lying on his side after receiving a mock shoulder wound.
"We've got a subject on the ground!" an officer said. Other officers searched a darkened meeting room and adjacent closet where they found four people hiding inside.
"Get on the ground! Get your hands up!" an officer yelled. "You in the corner on the floor, get your hands up where I can see them!" The bystanders are searched and placed in mock handcuffs before they are escorted outside.
Afterward, Macella, a professor in the department of mass communications at OCU, said he believed the mock scenarios provide good training for faculty and students who might someday have to react to the real thing.
"I think it's a great exercise," Macella said. "I think it's a real effective thing."
A 2008 report by a task force on campus security at Oklahoma's public colleges and universities recommended that campuses adopt open-door and no-fault-in-reporting policies for students and others on campus who report information about potential threats.
The recommendation was one of more than 30 by the Campus Life and Safety and Security Task Force that was created by former Gov. Brad Henry shortly after a lone gunman killed 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech before taking his own life in April 2007.
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