The Active Shooter Drill That Went Horribly Wrong - Jul 19, 2019

Video Transcript:

When police swarmed the AT&T building this afternoon, it looked and felt real. CPD officials said that for 10 to 12 minutes they thought it was an actual active shooter. As the ITM has found on numerous occasions the past few years, authorities say they were not told it was just an emergency class in progress. I was scared, like we were all scared trying to figure out what to do. Most here had no clue, including police. Proper notification was not made to all people in the building. It was a drill, it just was not conducted properly. And it's happening with some regularity. April 2017, Wabonzi Community College and Sugar Grove. Dozens of police, fire and rescue crews raised to the campus after 911 calls of an active shooter. This is Laura from the top library. The shooter is in here. She just shot six students. Someone sent help. I'm afraid to call anyone he might hear me. But as the ITM discovered there was no shooter here in 2017. Just an Illinois terrorism task force program funded by FEMA that a few people took too seriously. I got six students. I know they'll be shot on the way in. I think he's on the second floor right now. Similar scenario here at Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland, November 2018. Military police tweeted an active shooter alert. There was panic turned out to be a drill. A few months earlier, Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. A training exercise mistakenly put security forces on high alert, storming one building with full weapons. An unknown individual calling 911 believing that there was a real world incident occurring within the base hospital. After today's cas in Chicago, police officials said they encourage active shooter drills. But there are safety protocols. We should be notified before a drill is taking place. All of the participants in the building should be clearly aware before the drill is taking place. So we don't have this. Late word from AT&T, the sole tenant in the 31 story building company officials now say there was no drill or formal exercise underway before the fiasco. Had there been, they say building employees would have been notified as such a drill. AT&T, tonight telling us it was a training class and instructional video that caused the quote, false alarm. By whatever name certainly caused a lot of problems. A lot of people were very scared during that time. Driller training. All right. All right, Chuck. Thank you. Hey, if you like that video, be sure to subscribe to our ABC7 Chicago YouTube channel.