'You've got to have a plan'

Aug. 20—After the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the shooting at a Thursday night potluck dinner at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, the Cullman County Sheriff's Office began receiving calls requesting a civilian safety education course. Those requests led to Thursday night's church safety seminar at the Cullman campus of Daystar Church.

Citing church safety expert Dr. Carl Shin, CCSO Lieutenant Trevor Clemmons said that 617 people have been killed on faith based properties since 1999, but despite those numbers many churches do not make safety and security top priorities. Sheriff Matt Gentry is hoping to change that.

"If we can prevent something from happening while we participate in one of the greatest gifts that we have — which is worshipping our Lord — then that's a win," Gentry said.

Pastors and congregants from churches from across Cullman and the surrounding counties met at the Cullman Campus of Daystar Church. Some — like the three members from Ryan's Creek Baptist Church in Bremen — already have a security team in place at their church, and were simply looking for a refresher course, while others say they have no security in place and were there for educational purposes.

David Rusk and George Banister, who attend the Mt. Olive Bible Based Fellowship Baptist Church in Simcoe, said that their church is a small country church. It will only hold around 400 congregants who will soon be celebrating its 90th anniversary. It's the type of church that you feel safe in, but Banister said that drug abuse has been becoming more of an issue in the area. Church members had the CCSO photograph the church's exterior for a security consultation, and thought that attending the seminar would provide valuable information.

"You want to always be on your toes and on the lookout. It's like Barney Fife said, 'you gotta nip it in the bud,'" Banister said.

Unlike schools — where CCSO Director of Communications Chad Whaley says that security officers are better able to control and prevent a potentially dangerous situation — churches face a very unique set of problems. Perhaps the main one being their naturally welcoming nature that prevents several red flags that might be raised based on a person's appearance from being acted upon. But Clemmons said that the best way to react in those situations is simply to kill them with kindness.

"I mean you can be overzealous with it, but the best way to circumvent that is just love on them," Clemmons went on to suggest offering them coffee, shaking their hands, and inviting them to sit with you during service. In the event that this person were to be planning a violent act, this reaction not only disorients them, but also has the potential to provoke them into acting before they reach the rest of the congregation.

"No. 1, they're going to be thrown off. If they're there for this reason maybe they have some anti-church sentiment, they maybe an atheist or something, you know whatever the case may be, so they're going to be thrown off that you're overly nice to them. and if they're going to do something, they're going to do it then...I want him to do it early, I want him to do it in the parking lot," Clemmons said.

Another area which Clemmons advised implementing strict security protocols was in a church's nursery, saying that based on the number of calls that the CCSO receives regarding custodial disputes, he advised churches to enact a system determining who is allowed to pick up a child from the nursery. Whaley also said that he is aware that some churches may not be in favor of having armed security during their worship services, but due to the trend of violence beginning to take place at lower and lower grade levels, if there were to be only one armed person within a congregation that they should be located outside of the nursery.

"I've always said that the church, the security team, y'all will make the decision. You know are we going to have weapons or are we not going to have weapons? and my recommendation always was if there was only one gun, if only one person on there was comfortable carrying a weapon, then they should be at the nursery because unfortunately evil is very evil," Whaley said.

While half of the seminar was dedicated to the development of security teams and safety protocols, the continuation of acts of mass violence has shown that preventative measures alone do not offer a guarantee to stop these events from taking place. Which is why Whaley devoted the second half to ALICE — Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate — training and response protocol, which Whaley received during his active shooter training as part of his 14 year stint as a school resource officer, but that recent events have made a crucial tool in many other public spaces.

Referencing a video of the shooting which took place at West Freeway Church of Christ located in White Settlement, Texas in 2019 — where a gunman shot and killed two people before being shot by a member of the church's security team — Whaley said that while security responded properly, it was the pastor's and congregation's response that needed to be addressed.

"They (church security team) did their job, they did what they were supposed to do, they were intervening. What breaks my heart and what bothers me the most is what everybody else did. That's what we've gotta fix, there were multiple people in the [congregation] that when the shots were fired they laid down in their pews. When the shots were fired the pastor laid down. What you've got to ask yourself is, 'What if that guy that made that shot wasn't there that day, what if he missed, what if the guy with the rifle saw him first and shot him first?' Then there's no more guns. Now we've got a pastor that's laying down on the floor, we've got people laying down in their pews waiting to die," Whaley said.

According to Whaley, this response is natural for most people. Using the Cooper Color Code of situational awareness, Whaley said that the majority of the population typically live within Code White — being relaxed and completely unaware of potential danger — and when presented with a sudden act of violence are quickly thrown into Code Black on the opposite end of the spectrum that results in 'a complete breakdown of physical and mental performance.' The goal of the training was to give those attending the seminar the tools and information needed to begin living in Code Yellow — where they are relaxed, but prepared and situationally alert — so that when presented with an act of violence they would be able to respond.

While Whaley said that there has been no evidence to suggest that compliance with an assailant provided any increased odds for survival, physical engagement was not the only appropriate response. Once a person has enough information that it is safe to do so, evacuating the area is recommended, but when that is not an option Whaley suggested distracting and overwhelming the assailant as much as possible and for groups of people to spread out as much as possible rather than huddling together in groups.

"Anything beats nothing. You've got to have a plan and get good at it," Whaley said.