| Quincy Police conduct active shooter, hostage situation at Baldwin |
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Published: 6/11/2012 | Updated: 6/17/2013
By MATT HOPF
Herald-Whig Staff Writer
Quincy Police officers entered Baldwin Intermediate School Monday with their guns drawn after receiving reports of multiple shooters on the premises. The incident wasn't a real emergency, but rather a training exercise to help prepare officers for a situation involving an active shooter and a hostage situation. "If we train this way now, we'll be better prepared for something in real life," said Officer Steve Bangert, who coordinated the scenario. In the scenario, officers and shooters exchanged multiple gunshots in the hallways of the school and multiple victims yelled for help before the gunmen barricaded themselves in the building with hostages. While the bullets were small paint pellets and the victims were all volunteers, the situation was set up to be as realistic as possible. In fact, the guns used in the training look and react like the guns officers use on duty. Bangert said the goal of the training was to prepare officers for a real shooting. "If I can make this training as hard as possible and as real as possible, then they are going to be reacting to a real-life situation much, much better," he said. Quincy Police Chief Rob Copley said officers knew nothing about the training scenario except that there would be an exercise that would require the response of the Emergency Response Team. Copley said in a real situation, officers would have arrived more quickly. Since it was a training exercise, emergency sirens were not used. At the scene, Copley was able to ascertain from the sergeant who first arrived at the scene what was going on and what course of action he was taking. When the lieutenant on duty arrived, all he knew was that there were shots fired at Baldwin. The training event is part of "Sniper Week" in which officers from other agencies in Illinois and Missouri engage in sniper training for a week. "Each year, they do a full-blown scenario where they get to work with ERT and patrol officers as well," Copley said. "The rest of the week is all sniper training at different places." Two years ago, the training scenario took place in the Quincy Mall. Last year, an active shooter scenario was planned at Baldwin School, but it was canceled because of the June 27 windstorm. Just days later, though, the Emergency Response Team was called to a house in Kingston after an Iowa man shot two police officers and led law enforcement on a manhunt in Adams County. "We spent about four weeks putting this together last year, and then the storm came through and blew it out the night before," Copley said. "So rather spend another four weeks, we just decided to go ahead and run it this year." -- mhopf@whig.com/221-3391
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