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Burr Ridge, Willowbrook police help schools prepare for emergency
Updated: March 1, 2013 6:33AM
BURR RIDGE — A father arrives at school to pick up his child, but that father doesn’t have permission to do so. Frustrated, he takes matters into his own hands and goes looking for the boy.
This is the fictitious yet potentially realistic scenario played out at a table top session Friday between local school leaders and law enforcement.
“We wanted a scenario that was realistic, that could happen,” said Burr Ridge Police Chief John Madden, who wrote the scenario with Willowbrook Police Chief Mark Shelton as a training exercise for administrators from Gower 62 and Burr Ridge 180 schools.
Administrators and police spent more than an hour Friday morning walking through the steps that each should take in such a situation.
“It’s almost like a brainstorming,” Shelton said.
While teaching school officials what to do in a dangerous situation, the session also taught those educators about what to expect when police arrive on the scene.
“We need to understand what they’re going to do,” Gower Superintendent Steve Griesbach said.
This is the third such table-top exercise. Previous sessions addressed the appropriate response to a bus accident and severe weather.
Gower Superintendent Steve Griesbach said the annual exercises have left him and his staff feeling more confident that they know how to respond in an emergency.
