By Rebecca Friedman
The Scene staff
“Run. Hide. Fight.”
Those words top the Active Shooter Preparedness posters that line the halls of the Forest Park campus, Meramec campus and Harrison Education Center, and they will soon be displayed on the Florissant Valley campus.
The posters are part of a national campaign pioneered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and adopted by the St. Louis Community College police department.
“Run, hide, fight. Call 911 only when it is safe to do so,” the posters advise.
The Active Shooter Preparedness campaign has been going on for five years, and the “run, hide, fight” method of responding to an active-shooter emergency has long been suggested on the STLCC police webpage under the section for emergency evacuation procedures.
But after listening to campus response, Forest Park Lt. Adis Becirovic was concerned that the message wasn’t reaching enough people.
“I’m trying to meet 100 percent of the community’s needs,” Becirovic said. “This is very important, and I wanted to make sure that individuals who don’t visit the website get a chance to see something like this.”
To that end, Forest Park police have hung about 200 posters around campus, particularly in areas where students, faculty and staff might have occasion to stop and to read them, including in elevators and above water fountains.
Many students are noticing.
Funeral service major Louise Deckert, 24, has been concerned about the possibility of an active shooter at Forest Park with the uptick of violence at other schools and easy availability of firearms in the United States.
“Someone could be having a bad day, and you get caught up it,” she said. “You never know.”
There were 23 school shootings in the United States last year, according to CNN. The most deadly was Feb. 14, 2018, at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 students and staff members and injured 17.
Deckert said she’s grateful for the information provided on the Active Shooter Preparedness posters around the Forest Park campus.
“The posters are good,” she said. “Prior info, I think, is now outdated, focused on hiding, maybe leaving you trapped, and the new (information) focuses running to escape.”
Not all Forest Park students have noticed the posters. Fine arts major Jordan Cunningham, 22, said he’s too busy getting from class to class to pay attention to what is displayed on hallway walls.
The hanging of posters isn’t the only action being taken by STLCC police to protect students, faculty and staff in the case of an active shooter. They train every year in conjunction with other law-enforcement agencies in the region.
Each campus also conducts an annual “armed intruder lockdown drill,” as well as tabletop exercises.
“I encourage everyone to take 10 or 15 minutes to go through the quick reference of what to do, and assure the community that the police department is ready to respond to something like this,” Becirovic said.