Twenty years later, Columbine shooting still influencing Topeka school security

Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting. It took the lives of 12 students and a teacher, and changed school security across the country — including Northeast Kansas.

"In Topeka, Kansas, [the response] would be immediate and overwhelming,” Ron Brown, chief of police for Topeka Public Schools, said.

Brown was commander of the Topeka Police Department's SWAT team the day of the Columbine shooting. Since then, he says law enforcement has greatly evolved its response to active shooter scenarios.

"It was a pretty dramatic change because then, traditional policing, we would set up a perimeter initially, and then we would wait for those special weapons and tactics teams to get there,” Brown said. “We understand now that we can't do that."

Now, Brown says police response is much more immediate.

"We have children dying, people involved in an active shooter situation who may be hurt, so we need to get to them as quickly as we can, and so we have to eliminate that threat very quickly,” Brown said.

Topeka Public Schools now regularly prepare for worst-case scenarios.

"We do regular drills in our schools, crisis drills involving such things as lockdown secure campus. Police officers routinely practice response to an active shooter,” Brown said. “One of the newest concepts that has come out is we're working with our local fire agencies to create the rescue team concept where we take those trained EMTs and we bring them into the building, what we call the warm zone, and they can begin to do triage on those individuals."

It's all to be ready in case it ever becomes reality.

"We hope and pray that something like that never happens at our schools, but we absolutely need to be prepared in the event that it does,” Brown said.

The Columbine shooting also sparked the Kansas legislature to set up the

—a toll free number available 24/7 to report any threat of school violence.

The hotline has had nearly 6,000 since it started — 1,219 of those were referred for further investigation.