The initial report sounded eerily familiar to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. A former student causes alarm by walking onto a Broward high school campus without warning carrying a large bag.
So administrators at J.P. Taravella High in Coral Springs immediately locked down the school and alerted police right before the school day was supposed to start at 7:40 a.m. Students, teachers and parents waited in fear for two hours before they learned it was a false alarm, a case of a former student being mistaken for a current one.
With news helicopters hovering above, SWAT teams stormed onto campus and checked each classroom looking for clues. Some students who were still in the halls when the lockdown started reported being locked out of class and hiding in stairwells.
“Everyone in the school has been sitting in their classrooms with the lights off for the last hour and 12 mins. Police came in my classroom not too long ago armed with rifles. They’re looking for a former student,” one freshman tweeted, adding video that shows a dark room with audio of a law enforcement officer questioning the teacher and students.
It’s a scenario that could become common in Broward Schools. The school district passed a policy in February on emergency procedures, requiring school board employees to call a Code Red, or emergency lockdown, if they suspect there’s any potential for an emergency. They will not be disciplined if the incident turns out to be a false alarm, but they can be punished if they suspected harm but failed to act.
The policy was a reaction to the massacre Feb. 14, 2018, at Stoneman Douglas High, which killed 17 and wounded 17 others. No one called a Code Red until more than three minutes into the shooting, even though security monitor Andrew Medina spotted a former student with a history of troubles walk onto campus with a rifle bag. Medina and another security monitor were fired in June, while another security official, Principal Ty Thompson and three assistant principals are under investigation for their roles related to the massacre.
“I think you’re going to continue to see an extremely vigilant response by everyone and anyone on any campus in Broward County,” said Lisa Maxwell, executive director of the Broward Principals and Assistants Association. “Every person is going to be calling a Code Red if there is a whiff of a threat.”
While some students and parents complained on social media about having to go through the trauma, others said the school district and police handled the situation in the best way possible. Nakina Sankar Gravier said she learned about a potential threat when she was dropping off her son for Little Trojans Academy, a pre-K program at the school.
“While it was scary, I have to say how impressed I am by the Coral Springs police and [J.P. Taravella]. They were calm, no chaos, and you could tell we were in the best of hands,” Gravier posted on Facebook. “To the officer that reassured my 5-year-old that he has a safe school, thank you. The moment you took eliminated any ounce of anxiety he was visibly showing.”
School Board member Lori Alhadeff, who represents Taravella, has criticized many of the school district’s security practices. But she said in this incident “the district responded appropriately. A Code Red was called and Coral Springs Police Department quickly went into proper execution to properly respond.”
The incident began when a student alerted a security monitor that a former student had walked onto campus carrying a large bag.
After the school was locked down, Principal Mary DeArmas sent multiple messages through the district’s ParentLink site “to parents, students and staff to keep them informed about the situation and to inform them when the school received the all-clear to resume school operations,” district spokeswoman Cathleen Brennan said.
After officers checked the campus and reviewed surveillance video, they determined “the reported suspicious person was an actual student who resembled a former student,” said Francis Capre, spokesman for Coral Springs police.
Capre said he didn’t have information on what was actually in the student’s bag, but it wasn’t anything that would create a safety threat. He said the department was focusing more on why someone who might not be a current student was walking onto campus at the start of the school day.
Shortly before 9:45 a.m.,Coral Springs police confirmed through social media that there was no threat or danger to the school.
“We commend the student for coming forward — seeing something and saying something,” Brennan said.
stravis@sunsentinel.com or 561-243-6637 or @smtravis
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