Hanahan High has been packed with school resource officers this week – and all for good reason: it is all about reinforcing special training that goes into keeping Berkeley County School District’s schools safe.
BCSD contracts with five different agencies to put SROs inside of schools – Hanahan, Moncks Corner, Goose Creek and Charleston’s police departments, as well as the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office. Every summer for the last 10 years, Berkeley County School District’s SROs have come together for this special training session during the summer in preparation for the upcoming school year.
Tim Knight, director of security and emergency management for BCSD, said the district has 51 SROs this year – the most district has ever had. There are 46 out of the district’s 48 schools with at least one full time SRO; the remaining two are each located directly next to a school with an SRO, and the district hopes to have those two schools staffed with an SRO by next school year.
“We’re very excited about the program that we have,” Knight said. “We feel like we have the absolute best school resource officers anywhere in the country. These are men and women who are absolutely dedicated to keeping our schools safe.”
This week, SROs have focused on tactical medical training; listening to presentations on mental health, human trafficking and curbing gang activity; and collaborating with BCSD social workers, administrators and a few outside agencies to get ready for the 2023-2024 school year.
The most hands-on part of this week took place on Tuesday (Day 2), when the SROs worked with the Special Response Team from the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office to learn and recap special tactics to use in the event of an active assailant situation. The biggest event of the day was when the SROs, in teams of five, maneuvered through the school with firearms as part of a lifelike active shooter scenario that involved clearing classrooms and stairwells, with volunteers posing as victims and two SRT members posing as assailants. Officers fired using blank ammunition as part of the exercise.
While it is an intense concept to tackle, Knight said BCSD wants its families to feel safe going into the new school year.
“I want our parents to know that we are working hard every day to keep their kids safe in our schools,” Knight said, adding that all school staff members are committed to keeping schools safe, not just the SROs. “This training is just ongoing throughout the year, and everyone has bought into all of our security initiatives that we have put into place.”
Corporal Brad Scrio, a Sheriff’s Deputy who has served as an SRO at Sedgefield Middle for three years, said each year’s summer training builds on the previous year’s training.
“We look at things that are happening in our community, around the country, and bring some of that into these trainings so that we can experience what other people are experiencing and learn from what other people are seeing in their schools,” he said.
This year’s active assailant training came with additional types of exercises throughout the day. Inside one classroom of the building, officers took turns reacting to a scenario that involved being called into a classroom to deal with an allegedly armed student.
The sheriff’s office also brought its virtual reality training simulator, which helps the SROs with their vocal commands, and overall decision-making and de-escalation techniques. Officers participating in the simulator point fake guns at a screen that emulates real-world scenarios like ambushes and active shooter scenarios.
Officers participate in the simulator two at a time. Bobby Shuler, Major over Special Operations for the sheriff’s office, ran the simulator and would talk to the officers after each simulation to give them feedback on how they handled it.
Shuler said the program has close to 2,000 simulations, and scenarios can be manipulated based off the officers’ actions.
“Just like you train for your job, we train for our job,” he said, adding that it is critical for agencies to come together and practice this particular training. “This is why the district does this training – so we’re all on the same page – these are all the same agencies that are going to be responding to an actual event, if an event was ever to occur.”
