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HS Football: Sean Judge, Wyoming Valley West handle Coughlin

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H.S. Football: Adrian Otero, Hazleton Area run wild in rout of Pittston Area

WILKES-BARRE &#8212; For local college security departments, events like Thursday&#8217;s community college shooting in Oregon are a nightmare realized.&#8220;These are the kinds of things that make you lose sleep at night,&#8221; said Chris Jagoe, Director of Public Safety at Wilkes University.The 30-year security veteran said Friday he reacted with &#8220;shock and a little bit of horror&#8221; when he learned of the fatal mass shooting at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Oregon, where officials say a 26-year-old man opened fire, killing nine people and injuring nine others.Hailing from similarly situatued campuses, both Bill Barrett, Director of Safety and Security at Luzerne County Community College, and Robert Zavada, Campus Safety Director at Misericordia University, said word of the event hit home.&#8220;It&#8217;s just another example that this could happen anywhere,&#8221; Zavada said.As investigators 3,000 miles away continue working to figure out just what happened and why, the local campus security directors spoke about how their departments work to prevent such occurrences on their own campuses.For Jagoe, sharing information and cooperating with other agencies is paramount, and since coming to Wilkes he said he has worked at networking with city police and federal law enforcement as well as security at neighboring King&#8217;s College.He also said two Wilkes security officers recently were approved to participate in a federal law enforcement training program intended to equip officers to handle active shooter situations and to train other officers to handle them as well.And to assist security officers in isolating potential threats, Jagoe said the university is in the late stages of installing a &#8220;true lockdown&#8221; system, which would allow security to lock campus doors with the press of a button.A veteran of the city police department, Zavada said he has seen his share of violent incidents and their aftermath and tries to apply the knowledge he gained in his 23 years on the job to keeping his campus safe.&#8220;We don&#8217;t want students to worry,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s our job.&#8221;Zavada and Jagoe agreed that campus security is a team effort, requiring cooperation with staff, faculty and both men said the schools regularly conduct &#8220;tabletop&#8221; training exercises to be sure employees are at the ready.Heading into the Misericordia&#8217;s homecoming weekend, Zavada said the department will focus staffing and resources to strategically monitor areas of campus.Barrett, a retired city police chief, said the open-architecture style in which college campuses often are constructed presents one of the greatest challenges facing college security departments.Knowing who is and is not on campus with a legitimate purpose can prove nearly impossible, Barrett said, and often an individual is not removed from campus until staff, faculty or students report the person.&#8220;We don&#8217;t want to create a prison environment,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Along with that freedom comes a need to be aware.&#8221;There is no &#8220;impenetrable dome&#8221; to ensure total safety on a college campus, but that does not stop LCCC from taking steps to up security, Barrett said.As an example, he pointed to the college&#8217;s Health Sciences Center, which uses a limited-access system to prevent people not authorized to use the building from getting in beyond the lobby. Barrett said he expects to see such systems implemented in other buildings around campus, but with enrollment of about 6,000 students, it would be impossible to institute campus-wide.The school also recently installed a silent panic alarm system in each of the classrooms, he said, complementing the college&#8217;s 300 cameras and armed security force in a measure to keep college security moving forward.&#8220;We don&#8217;t want to sit back on Monday and say, &#8216;what could we have done on Friday,&#8217;&#8221; Barrett said.<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By James O&#8217;Malleyjomalley@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach James O&#8217;Malley at 570-991-6390 or on Twitter @TL_omalley</shirttailMeta></div>

Local college security heads talk campus security in wake of Oregon shooting