Police train for school shooting at Leeuwarden college

Police officers ran a training drill on how to deal with school shootings in a building of a Leeuwarden college. Victims and perpetrators were all played by students following some form of security training, to make the exercise as realistic as possible for police officers, NOS reports.

According to the police, preventing a panic is the most important thing when dealing with such an incident. Follow the instructions of first responders - both police and paramedics - they know where the safe places are.

This is the first time that police officers trained for a situation in which an armed person enters a building at a school, according to the broadcaster. There will be more training drills at the school in the coming days. 

There is no concrete threat of a school shooting in the Netherlands. "It is not so that we'll deal with this on a daily basis, but the world stage shows that it can happen", a police spokesperson said to Omrop Fryslan. 

School shootings are mostly an American phenomenon. The first and only time someone opened fire at a school in the Netherlands was in 1999, according to NOS. A 17-year-old pupil shot four other pupils and a teacher. All victims survived the incidents.