The shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech have forced campus police officers to train differently. ETSU Public Safety Police Officer Scott Smith, 35, trains other campus officers in case they encounter an active shooter. “You’re in the middle of the hallway and you got to go in with the mind set, ‘I may not make it out but I’m going in to get the shooter,'” Smith said, tinkering with his bike.

“Active shooter training” is preparing for a gunman to start shooting in a classroom or administration buildings, a team of whichever three officers were on duty would go directly to the shooter, Smith said.

Public Safety officers train for these situations in an empty facility on West Market Street.

“It’s going straight into a situation where everyone else is running out and you’re going in,” said Smith, an Elizabethton native.

Smith was a part of the start-up SWAT teams in the Carter County Sheriff’s Department and Jonesborough Police Department in the mid-to-late ’90s and brings those experiences to his training sessions.

Smith worked alongside the Drug Enforcement Agency and Drug Task Force, performing high-risk warrant arrests and drug raids, he said.

“You were responsible for everyone else,” Smith said. “You really had to think as team, and do your job individually. Whether it be in line, or if you were cover or if you were outside on a parameter.”

First at the Jonesborough Police Department and now as ETSU public safety officers, Amanda Worley and Smith have worked the same shifts together for four years. They were on patrol at Jonesbourgh, which covered answering calls about domestic abuse or performing traffic citations.

“He’s a great guy,” said Worley. “He’s real patient as a trainer.”

Smith remembers back to the days when he called himself gung-ho and full of vigor for his police work.

Comparing a seasoned officer to a young one in a squad, “Most young officers are ready to get into everything they can get into,” he says. “When you come out of something like … making a big bust or taking dope off the streets, it’s a good, natural high.”

One of the most life changing experiences for Smith was when he worked 36 hours straight to help a community survive the Carter County flood in January 1998.

“Over 200 mobile homes and 15 houses were demolished; 193 other houses or structures and six businesses were damaged,” said the National Weather Service Forecast Office Web site.

“I saw the devastation,” Smith said.

Smith remembers being with his SWAT team when he got the call.

“One night we are training and having a good time and then the next several hours were total stress,” he said. “After that, I had a whole new appreciation for life.”

While on the body recovery team, he said he found a young girl that had been swept by the water to the Valley Forge area of Carter County.

“That hit me because I was getting ready to have my first child,” he said. “Just how precious life is. How quick it can change.”

Now, Smith has three children; one boy, 11, and two girls, ages 2 and 9.

In a phone interview with his son, Noah, he said he feels special because his dad is a police officer. “He helps people by protecting them,” Noah said.

Sometimes that protection entails being seen, on the bike around campus or while training other officers.

The job also includes being in charge of community relations at ETSU Department of Public Safety.

This means he’s on campus, riding his bike, wearing long underwear under his uniform to keep warm while talking with students. “It’s interacting more with students to they feel more comfortable coming to us with problems, ” he says.

Usually, when he and Worley are called to help students, it’s for property recovery.

“We’ll know a situation, like somebody’s property was stolen, get reports to follow up on it and investigate,” Smith said.

Ninety percent of Smith’s work is paperwork, he said.

“It’s not like cops on TV.”

As for the future of the Department of Public Safety, Smith eagerly awaits grants to fund more cameras outlining campus and in the darker parking lots.

If you had asked Officer Smith where he would have been in five years, he never would have thought ETSU.

“That’s why I don’t plan anything anymore,” he said.

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