Ready and Waiting

By Andrew Goldstein

Police detective Brian Braswell of Petersburg, Va., thinks he's "three-quarters" prepared for the next Columbine. Last month, the local high school was the stage for a hostage drill complete with blaring fire alarms, 60 kids from Junior ROTC playing the wounded and scared, and an officer portraying a revenge-seeking killer, firing blanks from a shotgun. Braswell's team of officers had to push through waves of fleeing, panicked students and step over wounded children tugging at their pant legs crying "Help me!" Says Braswell: "From Columbine, we've learned that you have no choice but to go in and stop the carnage."

A year after a tragedy that left 15 dead--and scores of questions about why the police moved so slowly--crisis training that was once reserved for big-city SWAT teams has entered the curriculum for street cops. The Los Angeles police hope to have 5,000 patrol officers trained in rapid-deployment techniques by June. The National Tactical Officers Association, a SWAT training organization, has put more than 1,000 officers through "R.U. Ready High School" in Moyock, N.C., a $45,000 facility specifically built to simulate Columbine-style carnage. A school-hostage drill in Pinellas County, Fla., last month featured 600 middle schoolers hiding inside locked-down classrooms. It was enough to make baby-boomer parents long for the good old days of duck-and-cover.

The old rules on how to respond to school and office shootings--set up a perimeter and wait for SWAT--are gone. Now cops are trained that when they hear shooting, they should go in immediately, guns drawn, and stop the violence. "We had to make a change," says SWAT trainer Randy Watt. "Fifteen years ago, you didn't see people going in just for the sake of creating mayhem and planning their own demise."

During the Petersburg drill, several cops blinked back tears when they had to step over injured kids. "All your instincts tell you to help them," says Detective Braswell, a father of two. "But I understand what needs to be done." Some agencies have armed their patrol officers with rifles and equipped patrol cars with computers that can quickly call up school blueprints.

Would any of this have helped at Columbine, where patrolmen waited outside the school for later-arriving SWAT teams rather than barging inside to confront the gunmen? Colorado Governor Bill Owens told TIME that he thinks those slow and deliberate tactics were probably inappropriate and will be assessed by his Columbine Review Commission. But most departments aren't waiting for more studies--rapid deployment is the order of the day.

--By Andrew Goldstein