Pony Village Mall: "We're going to review everything and look at what we can do better”
NORTH BEND, Ore. -- The operations plan for the Pony Village Mall includes chapters on fire safety and tsunamis, but the section on shooter is missing.
It's one thing manager Barry Hayes wants to change after what happened at the Clackamas Town Center.
"We're gonna review everything and look at what we can do better. I guarantee you,” said Hayes.
He also wants to have security cameras installed in the common area.
"I want to make sure that people are safe. It's a public place where kids can come. They can come here after school to wait for their parents and this is a safe place to be,” Hayes said.
But Clackamas Town Center and Pony Village Mall are very different.
Clackamas is over 1 million sq. ft. Pony Village is just over 300,000.
10,000 people were in the Clackamas mall at the time of the shooting. That's the population of North Bend.
A smaller mall means faster police response and exits that are easier to find.
James Vining, owner of the "Mobile Magic" Kiosk, says he doesn’t feel any less safe working in a mall after the shooting.
"Because there's a kid’s area over here, I would make sure I probably went over there and got them out that door and make sure the surrounding customers and people were safe,” Vining said.
Hayes has scheduled a safety meeting to discuss new security measures.
What a joke...security cameras? I never knew a camera could stop an active shooter.
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I've worked at Pony Village Mall and often directly with Mr. Hayes. While I don't claim to know the man intimitely, he always came across as someone who loved to have meetings and implement feel good policies that have no real effect.
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The best deterrants he could have for an active shooter are to allow the Security Officer in the mall to be armed and to remove the rediculous policy of "no guns" in the mall. Those signs are posted at every mall entrance and do nothing to stop a criminal, yet law abiding citizens obey the rules and are left defenseless.
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The best way to stop an active shooter is to kill them as quickly as possible. Police departments across the country have learned this fact through years of recent experience and that is how they now train their officers. The first officer on scene locates the threat and eliminates it as quickly as possible.
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This is not a situation that can be solved by meetings and security cameras. Proactive? Hardly.
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Thank you Mr. Barry! We appreciate your pro-active approach.