Allen Park police hold town hall on active school shooters

ALLEN PARK, Mich. (WJBK) - Allen Park police shared a statistic Thursday night that in the past 17 days there have been 18 threats to schools in Metro Detroit's suburbs.

Right now students in Allen Park have random lockdown drills. Soon they'll have active shooter drills.

"When there's a direct threat in the building and that code word goes out: 'ALICE, ALICE, ALICE' over the intercom, there's no doubt from teachers or students what they're going to do," said Sgt. Wayne Albright, Allen Park police.

Allen Park parents got a crash course on active shooter training during a town hall meeting on school safety. The district is implementing ALICE training - an acronym that stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.

"We're not teaching them to go down the hallways hunting down bad guys and taking them out, that's the farthest thing from the truth," said Albright. "This is the last, last case. Nothing else has worked. And you either sit there and allow the shooter to do whatever he wants or we're going to use counter measures and fight. This is what we're teaching our kids."

The town hall comes on the heels of the mass shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and a pair of threats from Allen Park High School students.

"I think it's really terrifying," said Grace Butler, student. "And every time there's an announcement over the intercom I'm scared something is going to happen and we're going to go into lockdown."

Neither of the threats was deemed credible, but the district was slow to inform parents. The superintendent says that won't happen again.

"Our parents were letting us know that they were disappointed," said Superintendent Michael Darga. "We've done such great things in the past and this one time we didn't get that out in a timely matter and as we know in today's society, people find things out fast."

Allen Park teachers and a number of students have undergone ALICE training. Parents are torn.

"Submitting the children to any additional training at this time could be more traumatic for them," said Janet Butler, Allen Park parent. "I don't think they need to be subjected to any additional training or exposure of what could possibly happen to them in the schools."

"I like the training, I think it's a good idea," said parent Dan Peschke.

FOX 2: "How weird is it that we're having a town hall meeting with parents and teachers not to talk about education but how to survive in the event of a mass shooting?"

"It's the world we live in, unfortunately," Peschke said. "It's where we are today. It's scary having kids in school."

Teachers and middle school students have undergone ALICE training. Allen Park High School students are up next.