SUMMER TRAINING

ECU Police participate in advanced training during summer months

Summer is anything but boring for East Carolina University Police. Empty residence halls and classroom buildings, along with a lack of students on campus provide unique training opportunities for officers at ECU.

From mid-May to early August, it isn’t unusual to see a team of K-9s entering a building, simulated smoke spreading through a residence hall, officers in tactical gear running through a building or first responders repelling down the side of a high-rise residence hall.

The 60-person ECU Police Department is extremely busy during the academic year juggling large sporting events, crime prevention and the day-to-day hustle of campus. Summer presents a chance for officers to train in large groups and to convert areas of campus into their training ground.

Jon Barnwell, ECU Police Chief (Photo by Rhett Butler)

“We use the downtime in the summer to enhance our response to emergent situations, primarily active-shooter protocol,” said Jon Barnwell, ECU Police chief.

Barnwell is approaching his one-year anniversary as ECU’s Chief of Police and this is his first summer working and training with the officers.

In May, ECU officers took advantage of an empty Carol Belk Building, which typically houses the College of Health and Human Performance, and turned it into an active-shooter situation with hostages. The opportunity allowed officers to practice their rapid-response skills.

“You can’t get enough training,” said Ted Biggs, master police officer. “It seems like each year you learn more and more.”

This year, ECU officers added “Stop the Bleed” training offered by Dr. Eric Toschlog, ECU professor and chief of trauma and surgical critical care in the Department of Surgery at the Brody School of Medicine. The training instructs first responders and teachers how to apply tourniquets and methods to stop potentially fatal blood loss during mass shooting events.

In addition to the active-shooter training on campus, several officers attended Solo Officer Response Training, which prepares officers to respond to an active assailant alone if other officers are not immediately available. The officers who attended the course will use the skills they learned to help train other ECU officers.

“We want our officers to have the latest training and solo response is a relatively new approach to dealing with active shooters,” said Jason Sugg, ECU police deputy chief. “We never want to use it, but we do want to be able to respond appropriately if the time comes and summer offers a great opportunity to practice and train.”

ECU shares the opportunity of a quiet campus with other first-responder agencies like the Greenville Police Department and Greenville Fire/Rescue.

Members of the ECU Police Department participate in an active shooter drill at Carol Belk Hall on Tuesday, May 15, 2018. (Photo by Rhett Butler)

“I think people, especially students, would be surprised at the amount of advanced training that goes on during the summer with other agencies,” said Sugg. “The agencies would need to work together during a major incident on campus and opportunities to train together are important.”

Garrett Residence Hall was vacant for most of the summer, so it was used in July by Greenville Fire/Rescue for high-rise fire simulation training and K-9 teams from the Greenville area trained in the building.

The K-9 teams from police departments in the Greenville area train together monthly and, in the summer, that training brings them to empty buildings at ECU. This summer’s training included ECU’s new police K-9, Koda. ECU Master Patrol Officer David Heath is training the new dog after longtime ECU K-9 Marko retired in the spring.

In addition to the training taking place, ECU Police representatives serve on the City of Greenville’s traffic safety task force.

“Traffic safety is a concern for ECU. We want to work with the city to make sure the voices of our students, staff and faculty are heard as improvements are put into action,” Barnwell said. “ECU has a large number of vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists coming to and from our campuses each day. Making sure they are safe and working with the city to provide appropriate safety measures is important.”

ECU Police hope to work with the city to create preferred pathways for students to take when traveling to and from downtown and other areas that border campus. These pathways are areas typically frequented by students that are well lit, visible, include security cameras and will have special markers helping people find their way to campus.

The pathways project was initiated by the ECU Police Student Safety Committee that Barnwell started in 2017. The committee was one of Barnwell’s first priorities as chief and is being developed and implemented in partnership with the ECU Student Government Association. The committee includes SGA officers and students interested in safety on campus.

“Our Student Safety Committee brings forward students’ safety concerns and helps discover ways to solve the problem that students will listen to and understand. We have a campus full of bright students, we would be remiss if we didn’t tap into them as a resource,” said Barnwell.

The Student Safety Committee acts as a sounding board for ECU Police, Barnwell explained. If the department is exploring a new initiative, they take it in front of the students to get their perspective. Police also get – from the students’ eyes – their three top safety concerns and marry those issues with what crime statistics show are problems as well.

“Paying attention to data is important but understanding perception and making sure students feel safe is a top priority,” said Barnwell.

Another addition to safety on campus includes a pilot program that utilizes unarmed security to conduct basic service-oriented tasks like student escorts and building checks. Having the security officers perform these tasks will allow sworn officers to devote more time to safety issues on campus. The pilot program began during the spring and will continue into the fall semester.

This fall, Barnwell expects that students will notice more outreach and partnerships that promote positive interactions between officers and students.

(Some viewers may find this training content disturbing)