MIAMI (WSVN) - Miami-Dade students are days away from the new school year and the district is working to ensure their safety with active shooter drills.
At 10 a.m. Monday, police officials in the county hosted training exercises to guarantee students will know what to do when an active shooter enters their school. Authorities started as early as 8 a.m. setting up a perimeter in preparation for the drill.
Gunshots, as real as they can get, rang out at Miami Senior High School for a training simulation to get students prepared for the worst. Students were bandaged and covered in makeup resembling gunshot wounds as police officers pretending to be school shooters ran across halls and classrooms.
Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Ivan Silva said the dramatization is to get necessary for their safety.
“We want to create the scenario as realistic as possible to put them in a stressful situation to see how they’re going to act in order to evaluate them and also give them something to revert back to,” he said. “With police work, we always go back to our training.”
Maria Teresa Rojas with the Miami-Dade School Board said the simulation gave her chills.
“I thought of the children that just truly went through this,” she said.
Miami-Dade Schools Police hosted a large-scale active shooter training. They worked together with City of Miami police, fire rescue units and the school administration.
“We have three priorities when responding to active shooter drills like this,” said Silva. “The main one is always — is to stop the killing. That means that they are to engage that threat immediately. There’s no waiting. Once that’s done, our second step, our second priority is basically to stop the dying, which basically means to give medical attention to the injured.”
Silva wants to ensure parents that leaders are doing everything they can to prepare their officers just in case tragedy strikes. He said their unique police force, year-round training, and coordinated response puts them at an advantage.
“We work throughout the summer and throughout the year with different agencies, just for that reason, so when we come to the scene to something liek this, we all know what to do,” said Silva.
On Thursday, Doral held its drills to focus on how different agencies and the school administration would work together as quickly as possible.
Miami-Dade Public Schools Police will hold a large-scale active shooter, mass casualty exercise to establish better communication between law enforcement agencies.
These drills act as a reminder to remain vigilant in these stressful times and for parents to take part in precautions against these horrendous acts.
Doral Police Chief Edwin Lopez spoke last week after the demonstration to urge parents to have those difficult conversations with their children about school safety, using social media responsibly, and any type of threat students might encounter.
Copyright 2023 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.