Thumbnail: DNUSD logo
Hours after two parents confronted the school board over last week’s lockdown, Del Norte County law enforcement investigated another threat they ultimately deemed non-credible.
A report came to the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office concerning a possible threat of violence at Crescent Elk Middle School, Del Norte Unified School District announced on Facebook at about 9:30 a.m. Friday.
The child that allegedly made the threats had been speaking with a friend from Humboldt County who was concerned enough to notify the Fortuna Police Department, Del Norte County Sheriff Garrett Scott told Redwood Voice Community News.
Scott said the Fortuna Police Department notified his office of the threat at about midnight. His deputies and officers with the Crescent City Police Department began communicating with the child and his family at about 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. They determined that there was no threat to the school and will be following up with parents and local mental health resources, Scott said.
“The sheriff’s office and CCPD just felt like the threats were concerning so we sent a team to the residence of the person making the threats,” the sheriff said. “We searched the residence and interviewed the individual and contacted the parents and confirmed there’s no access to firearms and those kinds of things. We made the assessment that there was no credible threat.”
According to the school district’s Facebook post, CCPD and the California Highway Patrol increased patrols around Crescent Elk throughout the day.
On Thursday, two parents with children at Bess Maxwell Elementary School called for more training and better communication following a Jan. 7 lockdown sparked by a report that a man with a shotgun had been seen near Del Norte High School.
One parent, Eirene Dixon, also brought up the Dec. 5 tsunami evacuation, saying that there were no drills in place at Bess Maxwell for either of those emergencies.
In the case of the Jan. 7 incident, she asked district officials to clarify how close a person with a gun should be to a school before it’s considered a threat and asked if it was law enforcement that called an end to the lockdown.
“There were teachers going outside of the classrooms just to make sure that the door was locked, and a lot of them had to barricade the doors,” Dixon said.
Crescent City Police responded to a report of a man with an apparent shotgun riding a bicycle near Bess Maxwell late in the morning of Jan. 7. According to Police Chief Richard Griffin, the man had been seen near Bess Maxwell, continued westbound on Small Street near the College of the Redwoods and Del Norte High School parking lot but had left the area by the time police arrived.
Griffin, who had set up an incident command at Del Norte High on Jan. 7, said he wasn’t sure if the subject even existed.
“We got a hold of the school district office and reviewed video footage. We couldn’t see anything on that footage,” he told Redwood Voice on Friday. “We did a complete search of the area and hand-searched the doors and buildings around the college and nothing was found or located.”
After receiving the report, law enforcement directed Del Norte High, Bess Maxwell and Community School to lock down, DNUSD Superintendent Jeff Harris told trustees on Thursday. He noted that Del Norte High and Community School are in the city’s jurisdiction while Bess Maxwell is in the county.
The sheriff’s office also directed Mary Peacock Elementary School to go into lockdown, though “at no point was the suspect” near there, Harris said.
Joe Hamilton Elementary School and Crescent Elk Middle School also went into lockdown based on incorrect information their administrators received, the superintendent told trustees.
CR had also buttoned up its Del Norte campus, Griffin told Redwood Voice.
“We vetted that the best we could,” he said. “We had officers go around, even though the college isn’t in our jurisdiction, it didn’t matter for that type of thing. We checked buildings instead of just driving by in our car.”
On Jan. 7, DNUSD announced on Facebook that the lockdown was in process at 12:05 p.m. only to notify people 15 minutes later that it had been lifted. In its 12:20 p.m. post on Jan. 7, DNUSD stated that “no evidence of an armed individual was found on or near any school campuses.”
According to Harris, law enforcement hadn’t informed the district office that they were directing the three schools to lock down until about 10 minutes into the investigation. At Del Norte High, students were told to contact their parents to let them know they were OK, Harris said, which was “well in advance of the district office knowing that Del Norte High was in lockdown.”
“While we were trying to get information out, the information that we kept getting was changing constantly,” he told trustees. “So, while our communications team was writing the release, it was like, ‘Don’t put that out, this is happening now.’ By the time they said this is what’s going on, [law enforcement] had already called an end to the lockdown.”
Harris said another incident occurred on Jan. 7 when a student yelled “lockdown!” in the halls at another school.
“That sent two schools back into lockdown,” he said. “Jeff [Napier] and I went over to check out what was going on there and we realized what had happened. We met with law enforcement and determined there was nothing.”
In some cases, a school will call a lockdown when they receive a report of a potential threat near campus, Harris said. At Mary Peacock last year, staff locked down the school after hearing gunshots in the area — according to Harris, someone was sighting a rifle or were using a shot gun. When law enforcement directs a school to lock down, that lockdown isn’t lifted until law enforcement allows it, Harris said.
The superintendent also pointed out that just because a school has to secure a space doesn’t mean that it has called a lockdown, which he said is triggering. In some cases, a medical emergency may prompt school staff to ask parents to “hold where they are and not interfere,” Harris said.
In the case of a shelter-in-place notification, there’s an environmental factor, such as a chemical spill, that’s prompting students, staff and whoever else is on campus to go inside, Harris said. Then there’s secure campus, which means activities can’t continue outside because of a situation in the area that’s dangerous, but not an immediate threat to students.
And then there’s lockdown and barricade, Harris said. He noted that these protocols come from The Big Five, a San Mateo County Office of Education program, and The “I Love U Guys” Foundation, which was created in response to the 2006 Platte Canyon High School hostage crisis.
Harris said the school district is developing a training package with information for
students and families as well as training for staff and protocols for administrators that would include more information about how to respond to emergencies.
Though the potential threat on Jan. 7 was centered around the high school, Bess Maxwell and College of the Redwoods, Harris said that staff at every school that went into lockdown did an incredible job of following the process.
“At Mary Peacock, from what I was told in talking with them, they were outside and that playground was empty within 60 seconds and they were locked down,” he said. “The high school buttoned up. Bess Maxwell, the same thing. Even Crescent Elk, [students] were outside. The principal called it and they did what they needed to do, so those drills have happened. People did what they needed to do.”
Harris added that more communication is necessary, however, because Crescent Elk, Joe Hamilton and Mary Peacock should not have gone into a formal lockdown situation.
“Those should most likely have been a secure campus until they verified that there was an actual threat,” he said.
Del Norte County law enforcement follows a local protocol, Del Norte County Kids With Guns, which was set up in roughly the year 2000 by then-district attorney Bob Drossel, Scott said. This comes into play when law enforcement receives reports of a child with a firearm and a child that is making threats that could involve a firearm, he said.
“Those protocols are set and that includes contact of the family, search of the home, the assessment of the child and then it has a follow up portion too,” Scott said. “The right agencies are notified, such as Mental Health and those kinds of things, so follow up is conducted.”
In the case of Friday morning’s report of the potential threat against Crescent Elk — which law enforcement deemed non-credible — Scott said he spoke with Harris and both agreed to notify the public of the situation.
“Even though we rule out that there’s not a threat, at least the public knows we’re taking it very seriously, always,” he said.
