An active shooter was reported at Ohio State University Monday, sending the campus into a lockdown for more than an hour. It was later clarified that an OSU student, Abdul Artan, ran into pedestrians with his car and attacked passersby with a knife, injuring 11 individuals.
Artan was fatally shot by a campus police officer following the attack, according to OSU’s student newspaper The Lantern.
UW-Madison has not officially responded to the event, though Dean of Students Lori Berquam expressed support on Twitter.
Our thoughts are with those at OSU. Sending you Badger strength! #BadgerssupportBuckeyes
— Lori Berquam (@LoriBerquam) November 28, 2016
University spokesperson Meredith McGlone said the UW-Madison Police Department is always prepared for a similar situation to arise on campus.
“Particularly when [this happens] on a college, I think that resonates with a lot of folks,” McGlone said. “UWPD is always training and preparing for how to keep campus safe and help people respond as best they can in the event that anything like this were to occur.”
UWPD published a tweet saying their thoughts were with everyone at OSU, including the police that responded to the scene.
UWPD spokesperson Marc Lovicott said the police department will push information that will refresh the campus community on safety and handling of attack situations later this week once the events that took place at OSU have been processed. He said UWPD has been trained and has worked on campus to take precautions against occurrences such as knife attacks and active shooters.
“Every situation is different, but we would respond to whatever we have in front of us,” Lovicott said. “We'll respond as a police department, do the best we can to make sure our campus is safe and try to eliminate the threat as best we can.”
According to Lovicott, UWPD officers go through mandatory active shooter training at least once a year. Every member of the department participates in a variety of trainings, including how to handle an attacker who is using a knife. The programs are altered regularly to include different situations that actually occurred in recent events.
UWPD has also worked with the UW-Madison community to ensure that individuals on campus are aware of how to handle similar situations to the OSU event. They relaunched their active shooter response training program with an updated video and website this fall.
The police department offers regularly scheduled in-person trainings and also teaches these lessons to campus and community groups who request them. Lovicott said these one-on-one trainings with UWPD officers and groups that want to learn how to be prepared for active shooter and other attack situations have been successful.
Community Police Officer for University Apartments at UW-Madison Terry Evans tweeted that he could be contacted to conduct trainings.
Barricaded rooms by students at the #OhioState. Please contact me or @UWMadisonPolice for training on Run-Hide-Fight in active killer events pic.twitter.com/YQcgQBLIxj
— Officer Evans (@UnivAptsUWPD) November 28, 2016
“We've got these tools available to our community and we've been working very hard all semester long to get people trained and familiar with the terms ‘run, hide and fight,’ as we saw Ohio State use today, when alerting their campus about potentially harmful situations,” Lovicott said.
