By ROD ZOOK
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The school shooting in Texas and Tuesday's arrest of a Hutchinson man who allegedly threatened harm to co-workers brings into focus how law enforcement and emergency personnel take action in such situations.
Twenty-four-year-old Andrew Patterson of Hutchinson is facing possible charges of terroristic threat from Tuesday's arrest. According to Hutchinson Police Chief Jeff Hooper, there are procedures in place to deal with such incidents.
“Typically what we will do in those specific situations is, first off, secure the particular business or the school by sending officers there to ensure the safety of the business and the employees there until we can ascertain the threat level,” Hooper said. “Then of course we attempt to locate the potential suspect or the person or persons making the threat.”
Hooper says the addition of procedures and personnel to deal with mental health issues that can lead to such incidents has been important to the department.
“We have components in place to be able to deal with people who are having a mental health or substance abuse crisis in our community,” Hooper said. “Because typically what we find is that those situations can turn violent and we want that team to be better able to diffuse those situations.”
Hooper says Tuesday's arrest came after the department was notified by the public of the potential threat, which he says is necessary for the community to stay safe.
“It takes a community because, like the situation yesterday, we got a tip, and that allowed us to intercede and intercept that before potentially anything happened,” Hooper said. “Without that tip, we would have never known about that potential situation.”
Local law enforcement trains constantly to deal with such threats — that includes yearly exercises in the county schools.
“We are on the cutting edge of training for this type of incident. We have exercises and we train on it throughout the year,” Hooper said. “It’s a full-scale exercise with the current best practices in the field to be able to best handle these types of threats.”
Hooper says all law enforcement has come to the realization that it’s not a matter of if such an event will happen, but when it will happen.
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