`GUNMEN ON CAMPUS' DEPUTIES TRAIN TO COPE WITH SCHOOL SHOOTERS.

Byline: Greg Botonis Staff Writer

PALMDALE - With students gone for the winter break, Palmdale High School becomes a realistic training ground for sheriff's deputies.

Armed with pistols firing paint balls and maneuvering through rooms occupied by screaming teenagers - some bearing theatrical makeup for wounds - deputies trained in how to aggressively approach campus gunmen while minimizing harm to students.

``They'll run into students who are screaming for their lives and the deputies have to seek out the problem and eliminate the problem before anyone else can get hurt,'' said Deputy Dave Jennings of the Palmdale sheriff's station. ``This training is just a proactive approach to dealing with situations on campus.''

Similar training has been done at other Antelope Valley high schools, starting soon after the deadly 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teen gunmen killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves.

The training was mandated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department after a teen killed two schoolmates and wounded 13 other people in 2001 at Santana High School in San Diego County.

When the two armed teenagers began shooting at Columbine, officials said, law enforcement officers did exactly what they were trained to do: stay outside the campus until backup officers arrived.

But that tactic gave the teens time to keep shooting schoolmates.

``The thought was that we stay out and wait for a bunch of backup and that's exactly what they did: They followed their training,'' Jennings said. ``That school of thought had to be changed to protect our children in the schools.''

The deputies who went through the Palmdale High training Tuesday were confronted by a number of scenarios: from a single gunman to multiple shooters to being ambushed.

The deputies did not know what the gunmen looked like. They had to be guided to them by role-playing students, who included sheriff's Explorer members, law enforcement Regional Occupation Program students, and Junior ROTC cadets.

The gunmen were played by sheriff's Explorers.

When the deputies found the gunmen, they either tried to disarm them or shoot them with a paint-ball-firing gun similar to a 9 mm pistol. The teen ``gunmen'' also fired paint balls, which let deputies know whether they'd been shot by their quarry.

``There has been a great deal of care in getting this training as realistic as possible,'' Jennings said.

Nearly three dozen students and several deputies participated in the training, including six weapons experts from the Sheriff's Department's weapons training facility in Whittier.

Funtime Paintball donated the use of several face masks to protect deputies and students from the paint balls. Ameci's Pizza donated lunch. The Palmdale Playhouse's special-effects makeup designer, Tony Moore, donated his time to make up the ``wounded'' students with blood and gore.

A grant secured by the city of Palmdale's Public Safety Office paid overtime for deputies off duty to participate in the training and to pay for deputies to cover the shifts of those going through training.

Although the training was designed for the deputies, Regional Occupation Program instructor Cynthia Herrera, who teaches a law enforcement careers class, said the training is also an incredible opportunity for her students, who made up 15 of the participants.

``It opens their eyes to what can really happen in their own environment,'' Herrera said. ``It can happen anywhere and they need to know that. We can go through all the classroom instruction we want but the hands-on training is invaluable.''

Herrera said many of her students hope to go to work for law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the Sheriff's Department.

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Sheriff's deputies practice for a Columbine-style school takeover at Palmdale High School on Tuesday as they go past ``bodies'' of students while keeping their guns trained looking for ``shooters.''

(2 -- 3 -- color) Sheriff's deputies, above left, look for ``shooters'' at Palmdale High School on Tuesday. Above right, Palmdale Playhouse Director Tony Moore donates his time to make up Highland High School student Ebonie Campbell, 17, with blood.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer