New Haven Independent

Cross, closed for the afternoon due to midterm exam season, lit up with flashing lights Wednesday as members of seven public safety agencies descended on the school. At about 2 p.m., the police C.E.R.T. team (a.k.a. SWAT team) arrived in helmets, kneepads and rifles, breaking into the perimeter of a lockdown.

Wednesday’s drill, like this mock crisis at the Sound School, was supported by part of a nearly half-million dollar federal homeland security grant to help the city work on crisis response in schools.

Inside, a panicked “parent” knocked on the window to get out.

Cross Principal Bob Canelli slipped outside to issue a report. “This is just a drill; it’s fake,” he prefaced, before detailing the “crisis” in front of TV cameras: All week long, the school had been getting police information that a fight was brewing between two boys and a girl. Wednesday, one of the boys brought a gun to school. A fight broke out in the school cafeteria, and he started shooting.

How did the student get the gun into the school? “Well, we do have metal detectors, but you never know,” responded Canelli.

Ozzie Gooding (pictured) was one of 13 students “injured” by the bullets. Two teachers were also “hit,” leaving the school in lockdown and the cafeteria strewn with bodies. “Priority One! Patients to Yale!” cried an EMS worker as teams rolled the students on stretchers into a dozen ambulances (in the spirit of seriousness, they really did go to the hospital).

Lying on the floor “unconscious,” recent Cross graduate Rafael Morales took a moment to reflect. Like many of the 40 student participants in the drill, he was drawn to participate because he’s an aspiring actor. Other than enjoying the theatrics of the day, he learned how EMS teams operate and that “we always have to stay down when the perp is shooting.”

Senior William Diaz was in art class when the “bullets” flew. “It was real, it was crazy. You heard the gunshots, then you heard ‘Code Red!’” That meant the school was in lockdown. Diaz waited for an hour and a half in the art room before being led out with his hands on his head to a “reunitification” room where he would meet his parents.

“My heart is still beating,” he said, excused from the drill for a minute to be interviewed in the hall. “I wish I never go through something like that. I would have gone crazy.”

As he and other students sat in the reuniting room, several “parents” came running down the hall. Calling out for their children, they tried to push into the room before the scheduled reunification. Taken to a nearby classroom, they pounded on the door to get out.

“You deserve an Oscar for that,” said Dee Speese-Linehan, supervisor of social development for the board of education, to outraged “mom” Ramona Bryant (pictured).

Bryant, a mother herself, felt her temper rising as she played the part. In the script, she happened to arrive at school just before the lockdown, and was put aside into a room. “I was outraged because we didn’t have any information.” For how long? “Well, it seemed like a very long while, but it was probably about five minutes.”

The parents’ pounding fists brought a little more reality, more chaos to the staged event, said Speese-Linehan, who took notes on the performances for a subsequent debriefing. It reminded her of a harrowing episode in the 90s when a kindergartener from the Vincent Mauro school was shot while riding the bus.

“I remember that afternoon. The parents were shaking, they were so nervous.” Parents grew impassioned, declaring: “I’m taking my kid, you better not stop me! Exactly as you did.”

Lessons Learned

Over the course of the school system’s three full-scale crisis drills (at Hopkins, the Sound School and Cross), Speese-Linehan said she’s learned the city needs to grow most in the area of communication. Some areas worked smoothly, such as using ParentLink, a service the city implemented after browsing various options to send out recorded messages to parents.

But “the school needs to learn to talk to the first responders, [and] the first responders need to learn to talk to us.”

Assistant Police Chief Herman Badger confirmed her claim: Early on in the drill, emergency crews had a communication failure getting in touch with the school. “The 911 center tried to reach people here in the building, but their voicemails were full.”

Officials planned to meet Thursday morning to debrief on the foibles and successes of the drill.