AG Jeff Landry says an armed law enforcement officer from his office to help educate students and protect them from online crime, may have triggered the armed intruder false alarm at LSU yesterday. University spokesperson Ernie Ballard says they are reviewing the response and they recently trained for a similar scenario.
“Probably about a month ago, we had all agencies in Baton Rouge, EMS, Fire, both hospitals involved, LSU Police, all involved in the training,” said Ballard.
Ballard says campus safety is a shared responsibility and if someone sees something, they should say something.
“We’re fine with the inconvenience, we’re fine with the commotion because we want everyone to be safe. So we would rather them call them in and we can determine if it is a false alarm or not because if they don’t call it in and it is not a false alarm, that is where we have a problem,” said Ballard.
Just before 3pm, the school sent out an alert telling students in the area to run, fight, or hide. Ballard says while that language may be alarming, it’s a policy encouraged on the national level by Homeland Security.
“We are fully aware of the kind of reaction when those kinds of words are thrown out there, but we want people to know that these are serious situations and this isn’t a drill, this isn’t a joke,” said Ballard.
