UNCC campus shooting review praises quick police action, suggests better lockdown policy
An outside review of UNCC’s response to last year’s deadly shooting has found law enforcement officers were exceptionally quick to secure the campus after a gunman opened fire in a classroom but school leaders needed a better strategy for coordinating and ending the ensuing lockdown.
On Monday, the university released an executive summary of an extensive review done by the National Police Foundation and the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. UNC Charlotte Chancellor Phil Dubois, who is retiring at the end of June, commissioned the review after the campus shooting where two students were killed and four were injured.
On April 30, 2019, a former student of UNC Charlotte entered a Kennedy Building classroom and “began shooting people indiscriminately,” according to police. The shooter killed 19-year-old Ellis “Reed” Parlier of Midland, and 21-year-old Riley Howell of Waynesville, who witnesses said tackled the shooter. Trystan Terrell pleaded guilty in and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison.
University leaders conducted an internal review of UNCC’s response but also sought an external review due to the severity of the shooting, Dubois said.
Recommendations from the outside review include:
▪ Conducting more training exercises between campus police officers and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers.
▪ Improving threat assessment to detect behavioral or safety concerns
▪ Adding mental health resources for affected faculty, staff and students
▪ Establishing policies to limit the duration and impact of campus-wide lockdowns
“None of the mistakes we made caused any injuries,” Dubois said in an interview with the Observer. “I think you could argue that the trauma of the lockdown was a problem.”
The executive summary of the review found that the lockdown took too long to lift after the shooting and that there were inconsistent directions to students on how to find their families and confusion over senior administrators’ roles.
“There were no articulated parameters for declaring the campus safe or ending the lockdown,” the review states.
While the shooting occurred around 5:40 p.m., and people on campus were allowed to leave around five hours later, the lockdown did not formally end until early the next morning, university officials said Monday. That extended period likely traumatized students more than they had to be, Dubois said.
There were also communication issues between UNC Charlotte, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, Medic and Charlotte Fire, Dubois said. CMPD officers did not know the layout of the campus, Dubois said, and there was a delay in getting them keys to enter some rooms when officers were trying to clear buildings.
Still, the review found it took only four minutes for a UNC Charlotte police officer to arrive at the scene of the shooting inside the Kennedy Building. The review said the average police response to a school shooting is 10 minutes.
Already, campus leaders are implementing some recommendations from the review, Dubois said. The campus emergency operations center is expanding and some university administrators as well as first responders now have an “override” ability that will give them access to buildings even as doors remain locked during a lockdown. In the future, UNC Charlotte will conduct drills with other local first responders to practice coordinating and communicating in emergency situations.
Following another recommendation, Dubois said the university will also look into increasing resources toward detecting threats and behavioral health issues. While the university already has an existing framework which consists of the “Niner Care” website and a behavioral intervention team, Dubois said additional research will be needed to learn how to further develop a threat assessment system.
The review also notes that “there was no information that UNC Charlotte could have obtained prior to the incident that would have enabled it to identify the shooter as a potential threat.”
The report also said that “many employees continue to exhibit trauma from the incident” and recommended long-term mental health services for faculty and staff to supplement the existing Employee Assistance Program.
In the shooting’s aftermath, student requests for counseling was up 40%, Dubois said.
The university would like to increase the number of counselors available to students however, any increases to student fees — which fund the service — have been frozen due to the likely incoming recession from the coronavirus pandemic, he said. There is no other way to pay for additional counselors right now, he said.
“Everything is kind of up in the air because of COVID,” Dubois said. “Everybody is expecting a major budget reduction.”
This story was originally published June 29, 2020 at 1:15 PM.
