Grant County law enforcement officials look to beef up school shooting response plans

Published 6:15 am Wednesday, June 8, 2022

CANYON CITY — Even before the slaughter in Uvalde, Texas, last month, law enforcement officials in Grant County were looking at beefing up response plans for a potential school shooting here.

Now those efforts have taken on even greater urgency.

“It just made it come to the forefront even more,” Sheriff Todd McKinley said.

As reports emerged that police in Uvalde did not take immediate action to stop the Robb Elementary School shooter, the issue of what police should do when a school is under attack has entered into the national conversation.

Following calls for a federal investigation from Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, the Justice Department aims to highlight the lessons learned in Uvalde and identify practices that could help first responders in other communities prepare to deal with active shooter situations in the future.

For his part, McKinley says there is not enough information out there for him to play “armchair quarterback” on the law enforcement response in Uvalde.

That said, he and his deputies are committed to protecting the people of Grant County, whether the threat is from an active shooter in a school or something else.

“I’m the one that’s expected to stop them and lay my life on the line so that no one else gets injured,” McKinley said. “This is what I’m doing. This is dangerous, this is scary, but that’s what I’m here for.”

McKinley said what happened at Robb Elementary School stepped up the sense of urgency to ensure that local law enforcement officers are prepared to handle a similar scenario.

He said the Sheriff’s Office would be bringing in trainers from the state’s Department of Public Safety Standards and Training for an active shooter training with students and teachers at a school within the county that requested the training.

McKinley said other first responders from agencies in the school’s district would also take part.

The Sheriff’s Office plans to have a school resource officer stationed at Grant County schools this fall, which McKinley believes will be a deterrent to a potential shooter.

McKinley said the officer will be someone the kids can build a strong rapport with and feel comfortable enough to go to for help instead of someone who is there to catch them committing a crime.

“I don’t like it when people see us and say, ‘I want you to scare my kid,’” McKinley said. “We’re not there to scare your kid. We’re here to help your kid.”

The “scared straight” approach, he said, is the wrong kind of policing.

“I want them to respect us,” he said, “and see us as somebody they can come to.”

Coordinated response

The Oregon State Police has a special weapons and tactics team with members scattered across the state that would respond with tactical assistance to Grant County law enforcement agencies in an active shooter incident. According to the OSP web page, the SWAT team has 24 tactical members, 12 crisis negotiators and two medics.

Capt. Stephanie Bigman, OSP’s media and public relations representative, said in an email that she preferred not to give out specific locations and numbers of SWAT team members.

Bigman said each case is evaluated based on the circumstances. Still, she said, generally a local jurisdiction would request SWAT team assistance through the chain of command and the SWAT commander, in conjunction with OSP Operations, would determine if OSP SWAT is needed.

“Usually,” she said, “we can have the officer in charge on the phone with a SWAT commander within a few minutes.”

As for state troopers, Bigman added, during an active shooter event, OSP troopers are trained to respond immediately to the threat (as opposed to assembling a tactical team to enter a school building with a shooter inside).

The reality, McKinley said, is that it could take a significant amount of time before the state’s SWAT team members arrive to provide backup. Local law enforcement — the short-staffed Grant County Sheriff’s Office and state troopers patrolling in the area — will be the first responders to arrive in shooter situations.

That’s all the more reason local law enforcement needs to continue to receive SWAT training and have the equipment, such as protective shields, to respond in an emergency, McKinley added.

“We need our local people to be able to be the ones that make a difference instead of waiting hours for that kind of response,” the sheriff said. “If you’ve got something going on in a school, we need to be the ones that deal with it.”

First line of defense

During the Wednesday, June 1, session of County Court, McKinley said he knows that things are a little different in Grant County. However, he said, after watching what happened in the Uvalde shooting and talking to school officials from around the county, he has huge concerns for the safety of local schools.

That concern, he said, brings up the staffing shortage at the Sheriff’s Office.

Since the John Day Police Department was shut down in October, enforcing the law within the city limits has fallen primarily to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, which has just four patrol deputies covering the entire county. McKinley has repeatedly told both the John Day City Council and the County Court that he needs additional deputies to provide adequate coverage.

The John Day City Council offered to pay the county $300,000 a year to hire three deputies to provide law enforcement services in the city limits. But that proposal also called on the county to give the city $300,000 a year from its road fund to pay for street improvements to serve new housing developments in John Day, on the theory that housing starts in the city would broaden the tax base for the entire county.

While the County Court never formally deliberated on the city’s proposal, court members have made it clear that the idea of linking county road fund money to police services is a nonstarter.

The city and county still have not come to an agreement on law enforcement funding. Nonetheless, Grant County’s draft budget included a $300,000 contribution from John Day.

One way or the other, McKinley said, the Sheriff’s Office needs more staff.

“It’s not like we’re asking for the moon,” McKinley said. “There just needs to be a few more people that stand between evil and and the innocent.”