Active Shooter Response Training at UC San Diego – June 24, 2023

The all-day training is planned for Saturday, June 24. It will take place in the area planned for the construction of Ridge Walk North Living and Learning Neighborhood and will include some traffic impacts on Hopkins Drive. See map

The training takes advantage of an empty, fenced-off site that is prepared for construction. In addition, the training was planned for after commencement and before the start of summer session, when there is a break in classes and fewer students, faculty and staff are on campus.

Hopkins Drive will be closed between 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. and parking lot P359 for the Spanos Athletic Performance Center will be closed to the public. During this time, cars will be allowed to exit the Hopkins Parking Structure with an escort via Voigt Drive, but cars will not be allowed to travel on Hopkins Drive or enter the Hopkins Parking Structure. During the closure, vehicles that are part of the simulation will deploy sirens and lights while traveling south from the intersection of North Point Lane and Hopkins Drive to Hopkins Drive and Voigt Drive.

The training will involve simulations with roughly 100–150 people, including University of California campus police officers, responders from the San Diego Fire Department, a Mobile Intensive Care Nurse (MICN) from Scripps Hospital, volunteers and evaluators. People in the area of Thurgood Marshall College Lower Apartments may hear or see doors being breached, the use of blanks in firearms and vehicles on Hopkins Drive deploying sirens and lights.

The training will be held from 6 a.m. – 5 p.m., but it is the later part of the day-long training, after 1:30 p.m., where the community can expect the simulations that are part of the exercise and disruption of traffic flow on Hopkins Drive. If possible, please avoid this area during the scheduled training.  

In recent years, similar training exercises have been held at the Preuss School, Koman Family Outpatient Pavilion and Geisel Library. Active shooter response training takes place, at minimum, annually for the UC San Diego Police Department and it is common practice for neighboring agencies to train together.

UC San Diego has trained with other UC campuses in the past as well as neighboring agencies, including San Diego Sheriff's Department, San Diego Police Department, California State University San Marcos and University of San Diego. 

UC San Diego works to improve campus safety through multiple initiatives, including technology, training and an alliance of local first responders. For example, on June 27 and June 28, Environment, Health & Safety (EH&S) will partner with emergency personnel from the San Diego Sheriff Department, FBI, Department of Defense and San Diego Fire Department on an explosive device response training which will include a simulation of using robots to detect and disarm devices.

Safety is the university’s top concern. A thorough safety check of all participants and role players will be conducted before the drill starts.

A series of proactive campus communications will be issued leading into the training.

• UC San Diego Police Department notified first responder agencies in the area as well as residences, departments, labs and schools adjacent to the on-campus training site.
• UC San Diego Police Department will send a community bulletin to the entire campus community on June 20.
• On the day of the training, Saturday, June 24, a reminder will be sent to the entire campus community via a Triton Alert.
• The community bulletin and Triton Alert will be shared on campus social media (Twitter).
• Safety officers (law enforcement training staff) and training evaluators (law enforcement and fire department training staff) will be wearing bright vests clearly marked “training.” Law enforcement and fire participants will wear their police and fire uniforms.
• Signage will be placed around the site indicating that a training is in progress.
• Officers will be positioned along the south side of the training area and along Ridge Walk North, Voigt Drive and Hopkins Drive to direct people and inform them of the training.

Our hope is that the firing of blanks during the training would be picked up by ShotSpotter—it’s a good test of the technology. We let the company know in advance that we are doing training and although we are the only agency that would receive the ShotSpotter report, we have notified first responder agencies in San Diego of the training.

Training can better prepare our community to react when a critical incident occurs. On-campus shootings are rare, but there have been recent fatal shootings at or near universities in Maryland, Arizona, Virginia, California and Michigan. Like institutions across the nation, our campus is proactively addressing this potential threat.