Dozens of local government officials collaborated on how to respond to an active shooter during a meeting on Thursday at Grace B. Luhrs University Elementary School (GBLUES).

MG Tactical Advantage LLC, a Carlisle, Pennsylvania, based company that offers emergency response training, led an exercise to help school, first responders and government officials prepare for possible violent threats. The tabletop exercise, which involves a discussion of a simulated emergency rather than a full-scale drill, focused on an active shooter in GBLUES and an off-campus stabbing.

“The basic goal of the exercise is to try to ensure coordinated management of an emergency incident by all involved agencies,” a press release stated.

“There are truly no right answers,” said Mike Guido, owner and co-founder of MG Tactical Advantage. There can always be ways to improve, said Guido, who has decades of experience in law enforcement.

Members of the Shippensburg Area School District (SASD), Shippensburg University, local police, fire and medical departments and the four municipalities within SASD participated in the scenario. For more than four hours the officials worked together with the assistance of the company and members of Cumberland County’s department of public safety to understand the best course of action.

“We are not here this morning to tell you what to do,” said Mike Hurley of MG Tactical Advantage. The point of the exercise is not to criticize the procedures of an organization, but to learn and plan for how one organization’s actions can impact that of another, he said.

An example of that emerged during a group discussion when school officials said parents will want to pick up their children during an emergency. If the school were to encourage that, then traffic problems would increase, possibly causing a delayed police response, the participants said.

“It is so important to identify who is in charge,” Hurley said. In the scenario, SU’s director of public safety, Cytha Grissom, became the lead figure managing the emergency.

The exercise came in repeating parts where the participants were given information, then given time to figure out how they would respond and finally they took turns discussing what each organization would be doing at that point in the scenario. Grissom, being the central figure head, helped coordinate everyone’s actions.

Megan Silverstrim, Cumberland County’s communications specialist, said the county is also responsible for organizing and coordinating resources ranging from medical personnel to fire departments and law enforcement.

“We’re the resource folks,” she said. “We’re just there to guide you, not take over.”

Common themes of the discussion included managing traffic, providing medical aid to victims of the assault, stopping the shooter and securing the area, releasing information to the media and reuniting children with their parents.

SASD contracted the company for the exercise and was assisted by it to prepare for a reunification plan. The plan focuses on how and where parents can pick up their children evacuated from an incident.

MG Tactical Advantage personnel asked the participants and observers of the exercise to not share details response plan to the public to avoid a would-be assailant from using it for his or her advantage.

Shippensburg area schools, governments and first responder organizations are planning to hold a full-scale active shooter drill. At this time the date and details of the drill have not yet been decided.

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