Centre County police to form active shooter response plan, State College chief says
Local municipal police departments and the Centre Region Emergency Management Program are working toward establishing a county-wide active shooter response plan, the State College police chief said Friday.
The tentative plan is to integrate fire and EMS personnel immediately and set up a public information officer to more efficiently distribute information, John Gardner said.
He spoke at the State College Municipal Building on the one-year anniversary of borough shootings that left four people dead, another critically injured and rattled Happy Valley.
“It’s a concept that we’re very excited about,” Gardner said. “... We have a four- or five-page document of recommendations that we, as chiefs, are going to be looking at very hard and hopefully adopt.”
The shootings were the deadliest in recent Centre County history. The often-compared shooting at Penn State’s Hetzel Union Building in September 1996 left one university student dead and another injured.
The department and Penn State were criticized by community members for lack of alerts during the shooting, and timeliness in releasing information.
Gardner has long said he wished the department told the public sooner about the conclusion of the shootings, while the university said it did not send out an alert based on the location of the shootings and lack of imminent threat to its students or campus.
But despite the perceived shortcomings, borough police officers responded “magnificently,” Gardner said.
“No matter how safe this community is, we’re not immune from violence,” Gardner said. “We are basically a very, very safe community, but we also share the same risk and we share the same concerns as any community in this country. It can happen here at any time.”
The shootings also differed from others in Centre County, which tend to be a result of domestic violence or involve people who know each other, Gardner said.
On Jan. 24, 2019, Jordan Witmer fatally shot Dean and Steven Beachy at P.J. Harrigan’s Bar & Grill, fled and crashed a vehicle along Waupelani Drive and then shot his way into 748 Tussey Lane.
There, he fatally shot homeowner George McCormick and then died by suicide. Witmer “randomly chose their house” after he crashed the vehicle, police said.
“I don’t ever want to get to the point in State College where you lose four individuals and it’s not newsworthy,” Gardner said. “You lose one individual or somebody is injured or hurt, it’s a big deal here. I’m not dismissing what happens elsewhere, but the bottom line is this is something that’s not typical of State College or the greater community.”