Keweenaw Chamber of Commerce hosts active shooter seminar for businesses

HOUGHTON — Keweenaw business are putting safety first and taking steps to better prepare for crisis situations. Several dozen business owners and professionals met this morning in Houghton as they learned of some precautionary measures that will improve security in the work place.

As tragic events such as the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida become an increasingly common occurrence, a multi-jurisdictional task force has been assembled in the Keweenaw Peninsula and that team has been educating members of the community on how to be best prepared for an active shooter situation.

“We actually started training law enforcement about 8 years ago and obviously part of this puzzle involves schools, civilians, businesses, and different places,” said Trooper Matt Djerf, the community service trooper.

That training has branched off into other areas of our society. Schools are installing more sophisticated security systems and locking doors and business are also buttoning up loose ends with the goal that if something were to go wrong, casualty prevention is top priority. In addition to telling local business about steps they can take, the task force is going above and beyond by offering site inspections and suggestion on an individual basis.

“What we initially started off was to set up a program to teach schools how they would respond in a worst case scenario with an active shooter. We have hit on all the schools. We’ve been able to educate the hospitals, some of the local churches, and if someone wants a site view, if you wanted to contact the Houghton Police Department if you’re in the city of Houghton, or Michigan State Police, Matt Djerf, or Charlie Klein with the Houghton County Sheriff’s Department, we could go there and do a site analysis and say hey these are a few things that we would change in a worst case situation where you could keep yourself safe if there was an event where you had somebody out there committing violence,” said Houghton Police Chief John Donnelly.

Djerf says that a big part of preventing these situations is awareness, and paying attention to the warning signs. The one thing that every school shooting has in common since Columbine nearly 20 years ago is that all of the involved parties, including victims, responders, and even the attacker have all been members of the local community where the events have taken place.

“Most of the time in an act of violence event, when you go back and look at some of the behaviors that the suspect was the displaying prior to the event, most of the time there are some red flags or warning signs that people have picked up on and either chose to ignore or decided not to tell anyone about for what ever reason,” said Djerf.

The team will continue its outreach education this week with hands on demonstrations taking place at local campuses including Finlandia University tomorrow, and Hancock Public Schools later in the week.