Pitt official says more faculty need active killer training sessions

Not enough of the University of Pittsburgh’s 5,800 faculty have opted to take a campus police course that could save their lives if someone with a gun, knife or other weapon invades campus, a top official said.

Fallout from Monday night’s active shooter hoaxes and a nearly 90-minute delay by Pitt in sending out an emergency message to campus reached the school’s Faculty Assembly.

Ted Fritz, vice chancellor for public safety and emergency management, was asked to brief the elected faculty members on Pitt’s review of the emergency notification system on all five campuses and related moves. The intent is to ensure faster messaging if another hoax, or even worse, were to occur.

His appearance came amid continuing complaints by some students and parents that the notification delay left in the dark a campus already traumatized by a massive police response and sounds of gunfire. Students were organizing a “die in” for 2 p.m. Friday on the lawn outside the Cathedral of Learning to dramatize the risk of poor communication in a crisis.

”I was really scared. I was on the brink of tears,” said one of the organizers, Sharon Bennett, 21. Bennett is a junior biological sciences major from Tabernacle, N.J. who waited for news in her Ruskin Hall dorm Monday night. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for the people who were there.”

During Wednesday’s Faculty Assembly meeting, professors expressed worries that not all classroom doors can be locked, how they should respond to a lockdown and what happens to those suddenly left outside sealed buildings. One member suggested authorizing officials beyond the campus police chief to distribute emergency messages.

Fritz said Pitt leaders understand the need for faster messaging. He also asked the Assembly to suggest what might be the best settings in which to promote discussion of vital information.

“What do we do when the building alarm is going off? What do we do if there’s a shooter?” he said. “These are hard scenarios we need to talk about — and I don’t mean just once and then it’s done. There are new faculty every year.”

Pitt’s 80-officer police department has a five-minute video on its website, as well as guidelines to inform the public, about how to protect themselves in an attack. The video says such attacks typically last between two and 10 minutes and require split-section decisions.

Campus police also offer a course called “Civilian Response Training for Active Killer Incidents” that consists of four, hourlong sessions.

“There’s been several hundred faculty who have been through … our active killer training that the Pitt police department offers, but not enough,” Fritz said. “And I get it: It takes time to go through that training.”

University officials following Wednesday’s meeting did not have a more specific count of faculty who had completed the active killer instruction.

In addition to Pitt’s teaching force, the university has about 8,200 full- and part-time staff in Oakland, Greensburg, Johnstown, Bradford, and Titusville.

Pitt enrolls 34,000 students across its campuses.

“Mostly staff and students have been undergoing this training in person but many more have viewed training online, and the number of enrollees has gone up considerably since coming out of covid restrictions,” the university said in a statement released by spokesman Jared Stonesifer.

The investigation continues into the source of Monday’s bogus calls. Stonesifer referred questions to the FBI.

Three calls to an unrecorded city police line that night at 11:10 p.m. reported an active shooter in Hillman Library and touched off a massive police response.

Compounding the situation was an apparently legitimate call around 11:30 p.m. by someone reporting a potential threat in nearby Mervis Hall, where the business school is located, sending police there to clear that building as well.

No shooter was found at either location, and Pitt found itself with a successful police operation to clear both buildings safely, but a messaging effort that failed.

In the scramble to deal with back-to-back threats, an emergency notice was not sent to campus until 12:36 a.m. — an hour and 26 minutes after the initial Hillman call at 11:10 p.m.

Police Chief Jim Loftus credited the officers’ actions but took responsibility for not sending out a message earlier.

Images on social media showed some of an estimated 200 to 300 students and others inside Hillman fleeing down Forbes Avenue and climbing over railings as heavily armed police raced toward the complex.

Assembly members on Wednesday expressed interest in relaying word about the police training and getting information out about where faculty can get answers.

University Senate President Robin Kear said Monday’s upheaval, coming on the heels of other active shooter hoaxes at schools including Central Catholic and Oakland Catholic high schools, has added to stresses on student life.

“I find it heartbreaking that the state of our American society does not make the image of our students running out of Hillman Library a unique image at all,” she said.

Horrifying scenes have played out on multiple campuses in recent years.

“It’s just a little hard when it’s our students,” she said.

In March 2012, a patient opened fire inside Western Psychiatric Institute, killing a therapist and wounding four others before being shot and killed by police. That same spring, dozens of fake bomb threats caused evacuations and disruption on campus.

But, until the Central Catholic scare two weeks ago, Pitt had not had a lockdown since 2012.

Alerts at Pitt are sent by phone, text and email. During the Central Catholic incident, Pitt emails initially did not operate, officials said.

Pitt sends emergency messages to the entire campus community by email, and individuals can opt in to receive them by phone and text, too.

Officials say most of the 62,000 people who opt in for those messages are students and staff.

A professor asked about ShotSpotter technology, already available to much of campus, and if greater deployment of it could give additional guidance as to whether a threat is real. Fritz said building renovations now routinely include upgrades to more secure locking.

“We have a significant number of buildings that we can lock down remotely,” he said. “But they’re not all that way.”