WMD training useless for JMU police

House Editorial

Now, the aged, black-and-white film reels are almost comical.

Hiding from nuclear blasts, kids crouching beneath desks or flanking the windowless corridors of school hallways seems silly. Hindsight tells us the 1950s "duck and cover" routine was more than slightly overrated.

Foresight, we had hoped, could prevent the return of sensational hype as we enter a new "us vs. them" mentality amid a war on terrorism.

A new $2 million federal grant proved us wrong.

The JMU Police Department will receive weapons of mass destruction awareness training this December. That’s right, weapons of mass destruction training.

Shelled out in one-time, eight-hour courses, JMU police will participate in one of more than 500 sessions nationwide. Over the next two years, more than 30,000 public safety personnel will be trained. The program is the brainchild of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office for Domestic Preparedness.

No, we didn’t make that title up.

Though typical of the U.S. bureaucratic mess, the name symbolizes something more. We might as well duck and cover — regrettably, this program is all hype.

There’s no real WMD threat in Harrisonburg.

A program detailing decontamination procedures following a nuclear blast can’t have much purpose on our nearly rural campus. Environmental protection strategies following a WMD incident pose no benefit to campus. Harrisonburg’s poultry processing plants surely don’t top the nation’s terrorist’s targets.

The program mistakenly attempts to promote mindless hype over a threat that isn’t real to our students. Any given weekend, students feel cops themselves pose a greater threat than nuclear weapons.
The program’s flaws run deeper than JMU’s involvement, beyond implementation and into the initiative’s original conception.

JMU PD shouldn’t be chastised for taking advantage of a free program. Besides, they get individual certificates of completion — who could blame them?

The problem lies in the IACLEA’s lack of insight and mistaken attempt to promote mindless hype over a threat that isn’t real to our students. On a metropolitan campus, specialized training might be necessary. Terrorism seminars almost make sense. But even in the most targeted communities, a specific WMD program is a stretch.

Still, police shouldn’t be discouraged. Preparedness is to be valued, but WMD training is misguided.

We respect JMU’s finest for their dedication and service to our campus community — not because each officer could thwart a bio-terrorism attack or protect students against chemical warfare.

For now, we must trust that our officers will leave their WMD training sessions without jingles and slogans reminiscent of the 1950’s. The hype, we hope, is history.