Oswego church hosts mass shooting training program

Parishioners and other community members gathered at St. Anne Catholic Church in Oswego on May 15 to learn about how they and others can respond and survive a mass shooting event.

The open-to-the public presentation on ALICE (Alert Lockdown Inform Counter Evacuate) training was scheduled in response to the continuing series of mass shootings that have occurred across the nation in public places such as schools, churches and concerts.

ALICE is a nationwide security company that works with schools, businesses, religious organizations, government groups and law enforcement to provide response training for active shooter situations.

A plan to create a safety program for St. Anne’s first came about a few years ago, during a conversation between the church pastor, the Rev. John Ouper, and Officer Justin Pan of the Oswego Police Department, who is also an ALICE instructor, according to Ouper.

“We’re here to protect the people who walk through the door, and sometimes, it’s sad, but incidents happen, even within churches – places that are dedicated to God,” Ouper said. “Because of that, if we can change the minds on what to do when a catastrophe happens, if we can just be quicker in our response, then we will have the ability to help others get to the exits, be able to change the way things used to be to a new thought pattern.”

This is the first time that training of this nature has taken place in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet, Ouper said, adding that all churches were informed of the event and invited to attend.

“The more people who know and have an awareness, the more it can be passed on to congregations, creating a safer space,” Ouper said.

Chad Cunningham, a national trainer and director of product development with ALICE, led the discussion.

He encouraged the audience of about 80 area residents assembled in the church sanctuary to develop a plan for how to respond to incidents like mass shooters or attackers and to practice carrying out the plan.

“I want to take the worst-case scenario for this environment, and show you that you can survive it,” Cunningham said, pointing out that there is no program that can promise zero casualties in an incident with an armed attacker or gunman.

“We want a program that says we are going to mitigate casualties and increase survivability,” he said. “If you look at it, everywhere we go, these are life lessons. ... We have to have an option-based strategy, because everywhere we go, there has been a violent critical incident. How are we going to respond to that?”

“It’s no different than how do we respond to a fire, how do we respond to these other natural disasters,” he continued. “We just need to know how to respond to this man-made disaster.”

Most of the program focused on having participants engage in a series of scenarios, each progressively becoming more likely to limit the amount of casualties and injuries.

In the first scenario, participants were instructed to hide between the pews when a volunteer firing a NERF gun entered the space. The second scenario saw participants get up and head toward an exit while a volunteer was firing the NERF gun. The third scenario had participants throw soft projectiles at the shooter in an attempt to distract the person from firing upon the group.

In the final presentation, Cunningham gave a brief tutorial on how to physically restrain a shooter, which several volunteers took part in.

With each scenario, the number of participants who were hit by the gun decreased, sometimes drastically.

The Rev. Andy Davy, of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Plano, brought a group of parishioners to the presentation and even served as a volunteer shooter – in the drill where participants threw soft projectiles at him, as he tried to shoot parishoners with a NERF gun.

“That was weird, I liked the whole feeling; the surprise of getting a bunch of red things thrown at me. At the very beginning, I wasn’t ready for that, but once they started slowing down, I was able to focus in,” Davy said, discussing how the projectiles being thrown at him impeded his ability to fire the gun.

“This is an offering that this parish generously did, and it was a wonderful thing to get all of my different leaders, musicians, ushers, lectors, so that people during a worship service would know what to do,” Davy said.