ALLENDALE, Mich. — During a news conference Thursday morning, Michigan State Police campus law enforcement talked about how investigators immediately began reviewing surveillance footage in order to get a picture of the shooting suspect.
But, there are plans to do more in terms of security.
The campus chief of police, Marlon Lynch, detailed the overall strategic plan, which was announced in the Fall.
"We are currently in the process of centralizing all security systems that will accompany or will come with real time monitoring, which is what you're speaking of, is when an example would be in a situation like that, the location would be identified, the operator would know that that particular location has X number of cameras and begin automatically pulling the cameras out to help with the overall response for that," said Lynch.
At Grand Valley State University in West Michigan, 13 ON YOUR SIDE got an in-depth look at their advanced campus safety features.
In the dispatch center located on their Allendale campus, full-time dispatchers have access to 1,600 surveillance cameras that cover all of their campuses, including their Medical and downtown Pew campuses.
"They can immediately pull those cameras up, get eyes on it and give intelligence information to first responders," said Sgt. William O'Donnell with GVSU Police.
There are also four red buttons on the wall which as soon as dispatchers sense a safety risk, they can lift the glass cover and push the button which will lock all exterior doors immediately.
Each campus has their own lockdown mechanism which were added in 2019.
The dispatchers are also trained on the alert system to get emergency messaging out to students.
"It sends a text, voicemail and an email."
The Allendale campus has an outdoor warning and siren system where the dispatcher can speak to people across campus.
The university also added simple thumb-turn locks to every classroom in 2017.
"There has been one case in US history in educational environments where somebody behind a locked closed or barricaded door has been injured or killed so we've got to use that statistic to our advantage," said O'Donnell.
Another feature just added after the Uvalde school shooting, is door labeling to the campuses' main buildings so first responders know exactly where they're going once they arrive on scene of an emergency.
"Door A is right over there, Door 17 is right over there. It's a great point for the inbound firefighters too to know hey, the injury is inside Door 17."
It's all about finding best practices and lessons learned from other active shooting incidents to make the best safety decisions.
The university does live active shooter training scenarios twice a year.
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