Mahaska County Emergency Management Proposes Technology To Help Officers In School Emergency

Recent training sponsored by the Mahaska County Emergency Management and Mahaska County Sheriff's Office helped area first responders sharpen their skills to deal with active shooters.

Recent training sponsored by the Mahaska County Emergency Management and Mahaska County Sheriff’s Office helped area first responders sharpen their skills to deal with active shooters.

June 22nd, 2022

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Helping officers have the most information during a school emergency like a shooting is something the Mahaska County Emergency Management hopes to help provide.

Mahaska County Emergency Manager Jamey Robinson says his commission just approved money to help put panic buttons into local school offices that will broadcast to area law enforcement live audio from the offices at those individual school buildings.

This will allow those responding to a threat to hearing live, real-time information. Staff can take cover or protect themselves however they need to, while first responders may be able to hear threats, gunshots, or other information live from inside the building.

As the new communications come online in the following months, this option will become available for first responders in Mahaska County and neighboring counties, where local first responders have cooperative agreements.

Jasper County already has such a system in place, and Mahaska County, with the recent approval of the Emergency Management Commission, will soon have it and be able to hear and respond to threats.

Those agreements already allow agencies to be there in time of need, and being able to hear and respond only helps agencies and officers have more information as they arrive at life and death situations.

The Emergency Management Commission also recently approved bringing in a threat assessment expert who speaks nationally to work with local schools and law enforcement to help put local officials on the right path to providing the best information and planning.

Mahaska County Emergency Manager Jamey Robinson said the recent decision to hire the expert wasn’t a “knee-jerk” reaction to current events, even with the increased shooter incidents in recent history. “We’ve been talking about this for years. We’ve been working towards it for years.”

Robinson also praised deputy Mahaska County Emergency Coordinator Josh Stephens for his continued work and communication with the area school districts, saying, “he does a fantastic job. He’s talking with the different administrations and working on the planning and making sure that we’re all on the same page and working closely with law enforcement partners.”

Robinson says, ultimately, the office is working to ensure that the school districts and law enforcement “are on the same page.”

Some of Oskaloosa News’s early coverage included installing weather radios to help districts stay aware of weather threats. Still, as other threats have developed, they now include such threats as active shooter threats.

Robinson said that ongoing and continual training in the schools, evaluation and the partnership between the districts and the EMC is helping to provide increased security for the county.

The training that law enforcement uses also increases. From plastic guns and “bang, bang” to the use of service weapons outfitted to fire wax bullets has helped to increase the authenticity and realism of training for officers and other first responders.

“This is serious training when we’re inside those schools,” says Robinson. “It’s a blessing these officers take it so seriously.”

Posted by on Jun 22 2022. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed

         

Search Archive

Search by Date
Search by Category
Search with Google
Log in | Copyright by Oskaloosa News