Police brass from South Bay colleges and universities gathered Thursday to discuss Monday's gun scare at West Valley College in Saratoga and the lessons learned from the incident.
The collection of law enforcement personnel, called the Santa Clara County Colleges and Universities Chiefs Association, met up to make sure they have plans in place if they face an active shooter on a campus.
"We rely a lot on our meetings like this where we share a lot of information and we collaborate," saud Lt. Jeff Profio with West Valley-Mission Community College District. "When we have an incident, we talk about it, talk about the takeaways."
During Monday's incident at West Valley, the campus immediately went into lockdown as police started a campus-wide search. In the end, they detained two men for carrying a replica gun.
On Thursday, the chiefs spent time learning from that police response and provided their input.
"We're going to talk about what went well, what we can do better," Profio said. "The whole point of that is making sure the next time something happens, we can always perform the best that we can."
The group studies other incidents as well, like last month's shooting on the Michigan State University campus, where three students were killed and five others were injured.
Nearly all colleges and universities have their own police departments or security force. The group said, unfortunately, an active shooter situation is always in the back of the minds.
"They’re the types of things that keep us up at night, worried about it, trying to prepare for, and trying to practice as much as possible to be as prepared as we can," Foothill-De Anza Community College District Police Department Chief Danny Acosta said.
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