Glendora Police Continue Perfecting Citrus College Safety Drills

Glendora Police coordinated a lockdown drill on the campus Sept. 22 as a means to achieve better responsiveness to emergency situations.

As always, better improvement is a goal that both Glendora Police and Citrus College strive for.

The overall goal is to address the campus’ response to such emergencies as chemical spills, large accidents and even an active-shooter scenario -- the latter being the focus of the September drill.

Glendora Police will present a report of findings to Citrus on improving responsiveness later this month.

The partnership started two years ago when Glendora Police Chief Rob Castro, then a police captain, appointed Cpl. Michael Henderson as liaison to Citrus College to better coordinate campus safety with Citrus.

“Something as horrendous as a shooter on campus can cause chaos if we do not have a plan in place,” Henderson said.

Another goal of such drills is to help familiarize Glendora Police with the layout of the campus.

The drill, which in all took 20 minutes to execute, had Glendora Police officers and school officials break up into nine teams. They then focused on five major buildings on campus, the Liberal Arts/Business Building, Performing Arts Center, Professional Center, Educational Development Center and the Student Services Building.

The responsibility of each team was to approach every classroom and ensure teachers were following procedures established by officials: to lock all doors, turn off all lights and to keep students away from doors and windows.

Other teams then swept the campus and made sure anyone who was out in the open got into a building as soon as possible.

Henderson said that removing as many people from the open spaces on campus would reduce potential fatalities.

At the same time, the campus sent out e-mails, voice and text messages via Citrus College’s Campus Alert system so that teachers and students knew that a potential emergency was occurring.

Afterwards, the campus compiled a list of findings so that they and Glendora PD can assess deficiencies and improve response times on the part of professors and especially students.

There were only a handful of teachers who did not receive the e-mails or calls, simply because they were not near a computer or did not check their phones.

“There’s a lot of differences when we talk in terms of a lockdown at a college,” said Martha McDonald, Citrus College Dean of Students, adding that since college campuses are completely open, the risk for harm is much greater. “The execution did go quite well.”

Citrus College will hold a campus safety forum in the near future to allow the public to hear about what efforts the college and Glendora Police are undertaking to improve safety measures.