Following numerous UW-Madison faculty and staff requests, the University Police Department will offer Front Line Awareness training sessions this week to any staff, faculty or mailroom staff interested in learning procedures for handling bomb threats, agitated people and other related threats.
According to Officer Kurt Feavel, participants will learn what constitutes suspicious behavior, how to be more aware of things going on around university buildings and how to deal with people or items, such as mail, that could be a threat.
\Basically we're just trying to provide information to people so that they know how to respond to different issues,"" he said. ""All you have to do really is look at what's happening around the country. Right now everything seems to be pretty isolated to the Washington, D.C.-New York-New Jersey area but ... it's hard to say how much of a threat that poses here in Madison.""
Feavel said while some people are very concerned about their safety, most faculty, staff and mailroom personnel did not feel immediately threatened.
""It kind of varies back and forth,"" he said. ""A lot of people are going, '... yeah, it can happen here, and I'm going to pay a little bit more attention, but I'm not going to become paranoid about every piece of mail that I touch.'""
UW-Madison senior Matt Allen, a student assistant at the Bascom Hall mailroom, said people in his office are required to attend the sessions but many have already received some training on handling hazardous materials.
""We already know what steps to take after we get suspicious mail. We will be going [through] this though just to get the formal training,"" he said. ""It's definitely been an issue and we've started taking precautions like wearing gloves and we have a higher awareness. We haven't been very scared about it but we're taking precautions because we do get sketchy mail.""
Sessions will be held Oct. 30, noon, Animal Science, Room 212; Oct. 31, noon, Pyle Center, Rooms 325 to 326; Nov. 1, 9 a.m., Bascom Hall, Room 260; Nov 7., noon, Union South (TITU) and Nov. 8, 8:15 a.m., Grainger Hall, Room 2120.
