Sheriff describes plans for school shootings

BY DAN HILDEBRAN

ClayCivic.com Publisher

Sheriff Michelle Cook described three different scenarios under which her agency and the school district would reunify students with their parents in cases of shootings or other catastrophic incidents at Clay County public schools.

Cook made her comments on her podcast: Never Off Duty, hosted by Judson Sapp with guest Chief Kenneth Wagner of the Clay County Schools Police Department.

Chaos clock

The sheriff said that Florida law requires each school to have an active shooter plan, and while most school districts have a single plan that applies to all schools, Clay County officials drafted specific plans for each campus.

 “Some of our schools have medically fragile children,” she said. “Some of our schools are smaller and have one driveway in and one driveway out. Some of our schools are neighborhood schools and have multiple access points.”

She added that first responders to an active shooter scene are fighting not only the offender but also the clock.

“In Parkland, injured kids sat on the third floor for 45 minutes before somebody got to them for medical treatment,” she said. “That can’t happen.”

She then described the chaos clock.

“From the moment the first shot goes off until the last injured person is triaged and transported out, that’s the chaos clock,” she said, “and our goal is to shorten it.”

“Every school has a very short plan that can be pulled out,” she continued. “It’s just a few pages with detailed information on it that we need to know.”

Ex-husband shoots teacher

Cook then addressed the three plans for reunifying students and parents.  She referred to the three responses as Levels 1, 2, and 3.

“Level 1 would be something if there’s an incident that occurs on campus, and we can keep it isolated and do normal dismissal,” she said. “We would use the typical parent pickup that we use.”

Cook said a Level 1 response might be ordered in the case of an ex-husband of a teacher who walks into a classroom, shoots the teacher, then takes his own life.

“It’s very isolated within the school,” she said. “It’s contained; it’s over. That would be an all-hands-on-deck response, but that would typically be a Level 1 reunification, which means we would tell the parents to get in the normal parent pickup line, normal traffic flow.”

Traffic crash in the pickup line

Cook said a Level 2 reunification would occur when the normal parent pickup area is unavailable, such as when emergency vehicles are blocking the pickup line or if there has been a traffic crash in the pickup area. 

“If the normal parent pickup and the normal exchange of parent-student is impacted, we would go to a different location on a campus,” she said.

Shooter takes hostages

Cook said Level 3 reunifications would be ordered in the worst cases, where parents could not access the campus.

“A guy goes in and shoots the ex-wife, okay? she said. “And then holds the other kids as hostages. We can’t let any parents near that school, so we’re going to have to block it off. What we would do is then evacuate those kids off the school, put them on school buses, and take them to a predetermined location.”

Bad pudding scenario

Cook and Wagner said the same reunification plans would go into effect for other types of school hazards, like a fire or food poisoning.

“Imagine you have an elementary school where pudding is served, and an hour after lunch, you have 200 kids throwing up,” Cook said.  “That’s a mass-casualty incident, and we’re going to be calling parents in for a Level 1 or Level 2 reunification. And if there’s enough bad pudding everywhere, it may be a Level 3. So, the active shooter is the worst-case scenario. The great thing is the same plan, the same concepts can be used for the less extreme incidents that may occur in a school.”

Messaging and miscommunication

Both law enforcement officers said communications during a crisis are paramount.

The sheriff said that school threats through social media present a particular problem for law enforcement.

“It’s an interesting dynamic that exists with social media and school safety,” she said, “and we always have to err on the side of caution. I mean, that’s our job.”

Cook said that, like physical alarms for homes, most school alarms that come through social media are false.

“False alarms to me,” she said, “it reminds me of alarms on people’s houses. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of alarms are false. You’ve just got to be prepared for that 0.1%.”

She added that law enforcement can see false threats appear on platforms like Snapchat in one part of the country and then spread across the nation.

“It’s hard to explain to parents, though, because if my six-year-old is going to kindergarten and there’s a social media threat, and there’s any inkling of a chance that my six-year-old is going to be harmed, it’s real to me,” Cook said. “We have to balance not being callous, but also the reality of the investigative work that we do, and many times we can debunk these threats pretty quickly.”

Cook said other sources of misinformation are students reporting alleged incidents at their schools to their parents. She said parents should verify the information they get from their children before passing it along.

“And I’ll give you an example of one,” she said. “There was a fight, and a chair got knocked over, and somebody told their parents that somebody was shooting, and it went out as: there’s an active shooter. It never happened. It was a fight, and a chair got knocked over. So yes, listen to your children, but also go to the source because we’re going to be putting out the most accurate information that we have at that time.

Cook emphasized the importance of parents using the SaferWatch phone app to receive accurate information from law enforcement.

She said students and adults may use the app to report rumors or suspicious activity to law enforcement and the school police.

“If a parent has a concern,” she said, “and let’s say it happens at one in the morning and they’re not sure if they want to call somebody, they can send the SaferWatch tip in, and it’ll go directly to (school police) as well.”

Cook added that her agency would disseminate information to the community through the app, including the authenticity of school threats and information in reunifying parents with students.

“And if you’re a parent,” she added, “sign up for SaferWatch because, in the filters, you can select your child’s school. So, if anything happens at your child’s school, you’ll get a push notification to your phone.”

Cook said that in a school crisis, her agency would use SaferWatch and Twitter as its two primary communication channels.