“It was surreal,” recalls Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones on the one-year anniversary of the school shooting that saw a teenager pull a hand gun and begin firing at classmates in the cafeteria.
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In a few seconds an eighth-grader – 14-year-old James Austin Hancock — shot and wounded two classmates, with two other teenagers also injured in the bedlam.
And while the county’s top law enforcement officer — and one of the area’s leading advocates for armed protection of schools — looks back with relief the 2016 gunfire did not lead to any deaths, he worries about the next incident of deadly school violence.
“Everything has changed,” he said of the escalation of school shootings, bomb threats and other violence locally and nationwide. “And we have to change too, because if you avoid this problem like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, we are going to get eaten.”
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But recent improvements in school security help ease his concerns — a little.
Jones said had the shooting taken place a decade earlier, it may have left more horrific carnage in its wake.
Police, schools, public smarter about safety
Police, schools and the public — including school staffers and students — are smarter now, he said, thanks to active shooter drills and other emergency instructions shared with all inside school buildings.
Armed school police — also known as school resource officers supplied by local police or county law enforcement — rotate among Butler County schools.
Also, thanks to more local, state and federal school security funding, a majority of schools are wired with security measures — including instant panic buttons that broadcast to local police once activated.
MORE: State won’t identify school districts without safety plans
“Years ago we couldn’t even talk to each other because of the different radio frequencies used,” said Jones of the past difficulty of first responders working on separate communication systems.
“And 10 to 15 years ago we didn’t have all the training we do now,” he said.
Sheriff pushes for guns in schools
Jones has pushed hard to strengthen school security in recent years, including lobbying publicly for his idea of arming specially trained substitute teachers that drew national attention but no results.
Jones dismisses the widely taught school security training program of ALICE — Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate — as “Alice in wonderland” because it has no armed component to stop an active shooter inside a school.
Jones wants substitute teachers working in area schools who are former police and military personnel — and certified in conceal and carry training — allowing them to carry loaded handguns in schools.
His idea received some local support. In 2014, the school board of Edgewood Schools approved a procedure for qualified employees to apply to carry in schools after extensive police and board vetting — but no one applied for the option in subsequent school years.
Edgewood officials did not respond to requests this week on the status of the program.
Armed people stop armed people
On Feb. 29, 2016, Butler County Sheriff deputy Kent Hall was armed and working as a school resource officer inside the Madison school.
Hall heard the gunfire, drew his gun and raced to the cafeteria, but Hancock was already out a nearby exit door and running from school grounds. Hall jumped in his police cruiser and gave chase and eventually he and other officers surrounded Hancock forcing him to surrender.
The teen was sentenced to the Ohio Department of Youth Services until his 21st birthday and was behind bars at the Butler County Juvenile Detention Center since the incident. He entered a true plea in April to four counts of attempted murder with gun specifications and inducing panic.
Hancock was also designated a serious youthful offender, which means he will have an adult sentence hanging over his head while serving out the juvenile sentence. Judge Ronald Craft also sentenced Hancock to nine years in adult prison, but stayed that sentence until the teen’s behavior is known at the Ohio Department of Youth Services.
Area school officials — along with Jones and other local police officials — in general do not discuss publicly security measures and personnel in place out of concerns those planning school violence will have easier access with such knowledge.
Jones said his force and other police responses to the Madison shooting were done correctly.
“We always go back after an incident and do after-action reports. The only thing that would have stopped the shooting that day would have been metal detectors at the school doors,” but that security measure is expensive and impractical for most schools, said Jones.
Regardless, he said, school leaders should try to do more.
“School leaders have a tendency toward being more (politically) liberal,” and adverse to firearms in the hands of anyone besides a police officer stationed inside or near a school, said Jones.
“The only thing that will stop someone with a gun in a school is someone else with a gun,” he said.
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