When the Snowflake-Taylor police department in the high desert of Arizona conducted an active shooter drill at Snowflake High School in October 2024, students didn’t take it seriously, says police chief Bobby Martin. They were wandering around campus, laughing, having conversations, and not locking doors.

So at the start of this year, the police department decided to make things more realistic: they’d hold a drill without advance notice, and perhaps students would pay attention. But when the announcement went over the PA system that there was an active shooter on campus—and that this was not a drill—students panicked. One student texted her mother that there was an active shooter and that she loved her, adding “we might die.” The PA recording, made by a principal who had not been at the s

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