Accidental alert brings police to ENMU

The accidental push of a button sent police rushing onto the Eastern New Mexico University campus on Wednesday morning in search of an active shooter.

But it turned out there was no emergency at the Student Academic Services (SAS) building.

The university’s emergency alert system, RAVE Alert, sent out the false alarm a few minutes after 8 a.m. Wednesday.

University Police Chief Brad Mauldin said officers arrived on scene one minute later. After identifying that the alert was an accident, police officials sent out another alert notifying the community and staff that it was a false alert.

The all-clear was announced about 10 minutes after the initial alert.

Mauldin said the alert application, located on the cell phones of select university staff and faculty, has buttons for a variety of emergency alerts.

The active shooter button was accidentally pressed while a staff member had their cell phone in their pocket, Mauldin said.

This was the fifth time the university’s alert system has sent out false alerts since it was integrated at ENMU a year ago this month. The other four false emergency alerts were related to fire and medical emergencies.

This was the first false active shooter alarm.

“When we’ve seen the circumstances of activations, a consistency reported was that the phone was in their pocket at the time of activation,” Mauldin said. “I would, however, like to further research the circumstances surrounding these accidental activations and what, if anything, could be done to minimize or prevent them in the future.”

The mass text alert was sent out twice Wednesday morning due to two different officials taking the initiative to immediately notify the campus and community through the text alert, according to police officials.

ENMU President Steven Gamble said the university will continue using the system.

“It worked exactly as it should have. The feedback we got was that people began immediately barricading their classrooms,” Gamble said. “They did exactly what they were supposed to do. This was an impromptu and unplanned test of the system. It was all by accident, but we think we learned something from it.”

Mauldin said whether accidental or not, the most important thing in regard to an emergency alert is rapid response, adding that the average active shooter event is done within six minutes, so “fast response is critical.”

“It’s better to have a rapid false response than no response or a delayed response to an actual (emergency) event,” Mauldin said. “With any system, there are growing pains that you work through as an organization and, ultimately, it’s about doing what’s in the best interest of our students, faculty, staff and the local community.”

Assistant to the President Ronnie Birdsong said the final component for the university to add to the alert program is for the alert system to automatically call the phones located in classrooms. She said that this final component should be added in the spring.