Peyton HS students participate in active shooter drill, but do they work?

For the first time in three years, Peyton High School students participated in an active shooter drill on Thursday morning.

The four-hour exercise was put on by the Peyton School District with the help of El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and surrounding agencies.

Dozens of students were seen walking out the building, hand in hand and then escorted onto a school bus and driven to an unknown location. Media was only allowed to watch from a distance.

We asked law enforcement whether or not these drills are practical? SWAT Sgt. Gregory White said, “These are very practical and they help us work through a lot of the issues we have up to including meeting the firefighters who are going to come in and respond with us.”

Law enforcement said they tried to make the drills as realistic as possible by sounding off door alarms, locking exits so students would face some of the same struggles they might encounter during an active shooter situation.

Even though a drill like this may not prevent an active shooter, Sgt. White says the practice doesn’t hurt, “We all grew up doing fire drills in school and there hasn’t been a child hurt in a fire for years, so this is our new world so we have to be able to deal with and to as best as we can.”

We reached to the Peyton School District for comment, but it has yet to get back to us.