Frustrated parents felt some of their questions about Washoe County School District's lockdown policy went unanswered after a code yellow at Mendive Middle School earlier this month.
Washoe County School District Police are defending their lockdown protocols after we spoke with them Thursday.
Parents asked why the district releases so few details when it comes to lockdown notifications. "It's not necessarily because we're withholding that information, it's because we don't even know exactly what we have at that time," explains Jason Trevino, Chief of WCSD Police Department.
Trevino adds releasing what they do have, could do more harm than good anyway. "If we were to release the initial information, it's just not factually based, it's rumor, it's third hand information," he says.
He also says it could hamper their investigation for the situation at hand, especially with social media. "The suspect has the same exact access to that same information, right? 'This is exactly what we're looking for,' right? That could be a problem for us." He said it could also pose a problem for potential future incidents as well.
Trevino says it wouldn't make sense for them to explain or reveal their investigation tactics. "The Wolf Pack's probably not giving up their playbook for tonight's game, why would we do that in law enforcement? I understand people want answers, but if I tell you exactly what we did, exactly how we arrived to our conclusion, exactly the facts surrounding that circumstance--then we're giving away our playbook," he says.
Before Mendive's code yellow on March 1st, a rumored threat circulated around social media the week before. We asked why school officials didn't immediatelyreassure parents that the initial threat, which was deemed unfounded, had nothing to do with the subsequent lockdown after school started that Thursday.
Trevino told us it's the district who sends those messages out, rather than school police. While the district still wouldn't speak to specifics about this particular incident, they told us they're constantly learning from each situation. Trevino did tell us they deal with a lot on a daily basis. "The overwhelming majority of those things do not amount to anything that would be worthy of sending that 'Connect Ed' message home," he says.
Parents were also curious about follow up; what happens to someone who makes these threats? What is their punishment? Trevino says that's all up to the juvenile center. "We don't handle the prosecution, we don't recommend the punishment, that's not our job, our job is the investigatory process."
Another concern raised is the time it takes the district to notify parents about a possible code yellow. School officials explained that policy in an email:
Regarding the protocol for informing families of code yellow and code red lockdowns: code yellows are handled on a case-by-case basis, depending on the situation and the school site administration. We handle a number of situations every day in the district, including “police activity in the neighborhood, reported gas leaks, or smoke in the school kitchen, etc. We could send literally dozens of these code yellow calls to parents every day. So school administration typically decides when to send these code yellow calls. We are constantly learning from each individual situation and work to improve our communications in these situations based on parent feedback.
Code red calls are more serious, and our protocol is that communications will assume responsibility for setting up connect ed calls as soon as possible in cases like that. However, we can’t always get information out immediately, because we ourselves are waiting to receive accurate information from the school and school police. Code reds are our highest priority, and we treat them as such.
It’s important to note that a lot of important safety measures are up and running before parents ever receive information from our district. Students are consistently participating in drills throughout the year, and these processes run smoothly when they need to be used. So if parents are waiting for official word from the school district, we want to reassure them that safety measures are being used, even if they have to wait a few minutes for the information they need.
