Noah Johnson Daily Press Gladstone Public Safety Officer Mallory Nelsen and Detective/Sergeant Aaron Quinlan load their Airsoft guns before entering Gladstone High School as part of an active shooter drill.

GLADSTONE – Local officials reconvene following the completion of an active shooter drill.

After completing an active shooter drill on Tuesday, officials in Gladstone met to discuss how the exercise went. Participants, first responders, teachers and staff reviewed the scenario and discussed what worked well and what could improve.

“We have the school staff and pretty much all of our first responder agencies represented today. I think with any exercise you learn, you know, that’s the goal you learn where your deficiencies might be. We found a few of those and we’re going to train and we’re going to have more of these exercises to improve our response, but it’s been a great exercise. And I think there’s some great feedback coming out of it,” said Delta County Emergency Management Coordinator Paul Geyer.

One sticking point was the revelation that 911 dispatch could receive and respond to texts, something not all of the school staff was aware of.

This means teachers and other staff can communicate with dispatch during a mass casualty situation in a quieter manner.

Representatives from dispatch attended the briefing and they said it is encouraged to continue to reach out to 911, regardless of if anyone has already made contact with them.

“They (dispatch) mentioned on Tuesday that no call is insignificant and you shouldn’t worry about overwhelming the 911 system,” Geyer said.

Director of Delta County Dispatch, Jen Peterson said her team was aware of the drill, so they were calmly given the information.

“All of the screaming and fear that we normally would encounter on a call like that was not present. So, it was a little bit different but you know from a dispatches perspective. Basically, we’re taking in that initial information and then based on what we’re hearing from our callers, we are coordinating a response appropriate for what we’re being told,” Peterson said.

She added that her team developed a good working relationship with the schools in the area and teachers understand why dispatch asks the questions they do.

“We do have a really good working relationship with our area schools, which I think would help us if we ever had the misfortune of having an event like this,” Peterson said.

“We’ve worked together enough where our dispatchers, I think, would get a level of cooperation than another area may not get if their school staff wasn’t aware in advance of what (is) being asked and why.”

Another sticking point involved improving communication between all agencies and the school.

“Communication is always a big thing,” said Gladstone Public Safety Director Rob Robinson.

“Not that the communication was horrible, but when you have so many different entities working and you’re trying to relay information and stuff like that communication is always a breakdown.”

Robinson added during his career, communication always requires improvement.

Robinson also emphasized the importance of working as a unit rather than independent agencies.

“We need to work as a team,” he said.

He said that includes law enforcement agencies, school staff, state police and more.

Geyer echoed Robinson saying, “I think the key though is realizing that this is a county-wide response that’s going to involve agencies across the county that need to practice and work together to make an incident like this, you know go as smoothly and as safely as it can.”

Overall, Geyer and Robinson said the exercise was a success.

“It was very impressive and I’m very happy about it,” Robinson said.

He added that this exercise is only the beginning as the county hopes to conduct a drill yearly to stay prepared.

“We’ve created a good first step here I will say and now training every year, you know, picking a different venue and continuing to train as one big team, not as individual entities is vitally important and we’re on the right track, Robinson said.

“We’re going to keep the ball going, we’re gonna start patching holes where we noticed (and) make our plan a little bit better each time we do it.”