A very scary afternoon

Poststructural Pub
1

I was at my daughter’s school this afternoon, at about 2:30, getting ready to do my first campus supervision rotation. I was actually a little bit early, and had just donned my garish yellow vest and started putting the parking cones out when I saw two police cars go speeding by, with lights on and and sirens blaring. That would be unusual enough in that neighborhood, but then one of the people who live across from the school came up to me and asked if anyone at the school had heard anything. “About what?” I asked. “Those are the fifth and sixth police cars that have been been by here in the past few minutes” she said. I suggested she go into the office and ask, but she’d barely gotten to the door when the loudspeakers came on: “Lockdown is in effect. Repeat: we are locking down the school. If you’re inside the school, stay where you are. If you’re outside get inside immediately!” My supervisor and I looked at each other in horror…there were already parents in their cars lining up to pick up their kids! We ran to each vehicle, and just had time to say tersely to each waiting parent “The school is locking down. Please stay in your cars!” Even then, the door was locked when we got to it, and we had to pound on it and identify ourselves before they would let us in.

Within seconds, every person hanging out outside the buildings had been shepherded inside, every door (interior and exterior) had been locked, every window had been shaded and every light had been turned off. It was almost eerily silent, for a building with more than 400 teenagers in it! I was in the office (worrying about my daughter, who was in her Latin classroom), and the secretary said that the police (who had ordered the lockdown) had told her that three men with guns had been sighted in the immediate vicinity of the school. We kept peeking outside at the increasing number of arriving parents, none of whom seem to have gotten the message from the ones who were already there when the lockdown started. They were milling around on the lawn, some with young children in tow (a few were talking on cell phones with worried looks on their faces…I think they were probably talking to their kids inside the school). No one is supposed to enter or leave the school during a lockdown, but the principal finally went outside with his bullhorn and told the waiting parents to get into their cars and stay there (surprisingly, even after that, there were people who didn’t comply!)

I found myself in the copy room with another parent, and we both agreed that we were glad we were there, rather than at home, or waiting outside with the other parents. At least we knew that the danger was outside, rather than roaming the halls of the school. I did call my husband (quietly) to let him know that I was fine and that, as far as I knew, Johanna was too, in case he heard something on the news.

After about a half an hour, the police called and gave the all-clear. They never did tell us if they’d captured the men, or if it had been a false alarm, or anything like that (I’m hoping there will be something on the news this evening).

Since Columbine, something like this has been every parent’s nightmare. It was good to see how quickly and efficiently the school responded. The only glitch in their plans was that no one stopped to think how to handle it if an emergency happened during morning drop-off or afternoon pick-up…I guess they’ll have to refine things a little. Still, it was nice to see that everyone knew what was expected of him/her, and things got secured so quickly.

I think I’ll have to have another whiskey this evening!

2

It is freaky. I’ve referred to an incident last year where an armed bank robbery occurred 2 blocks away, and helicopters hovered and surveilled our neighborhood for the next hour or so. Weird feeling.

I’m glad everyone’s ok.

3

I’m glad to hear that all is well. Like you, I’d feel lucky to actually be at the school if something like that went on. Think how horrible it was for the folks waiting in their cars.

4

Oh, I know! I’m sure they were just terrified…I would have been!

Those of us who were in the office started discussing the idea of a cell phone tree for something like this. It would have been nice if a couple of us could have called a few key people with the basic info (the kids are fine, the problem is outside the school and the police are on it, don’t come to the school until you get an all-clear, if you’re already here, don’t leave your car), who could have spread the info quickly to others.

Redwolf

5

Interesting topic this.

makes me question along the lines of “how deep is the layer of civility of a community?”

In localities impacted by natural disaster or war, the civil layer is historically shown to disolve in an instant giving rise to a lot of mob behaviour, looting and general breakdown of good-will.

Having such a formal divice as a “lock-down” makes me ask "could it be that that those taking care of the support of civility are afraid that collapse is imanent and have enacted such devices to resist it? Are they attempting to “thicken” the civil layer as a desirable outcome? Or is it something else?

The need for such things as lockdowns is, to me, scary in itself - and I ask - is there a true need? Specially when it is being engaged to counter internal threats. Why is the community losing trust in itself?

6

Looking at the history of lynch mobs and such, I get the feeling that (1) the society never had much trust in itself (2) it never had cause to trust itself.

7

That doesn’t sound like much fun. There was a bomb scare at my High School one time, because they had found an unidentified bag that smelled “weird” it was just someone’s lunch that smelled of course there was no bomb or anything. This was last year like spring of '06 I think.

At that same they used to have lock down drills where it wasn’t some much a lock down drill as an excuse to send drug dogs through out the school. A load of shite if you ask me.

8

In the wake of Columbine and V-tech, I’d rather have a lockdown than a bunch of dead kids. The goal is to protect our kids from a$$holes who want to kill them.

There were three men running around the neighborhood with guns. What should we have done…just released the kids and trusted that one of those guys wouldn’t decide that taking a few hostages might keep him from getting arrested?

Redwolf

9

Yes - the method was appropriate. The threat-readyness is what attracts my attention. That, and the situation where the scary events you describe seem prevalent enough to warrant general hyper-allert measures. It is certainly a great concern. I watched “Bowling for Collumbine” again a few days ago - absolutely horrific, Mr Moore was uncharacteristically short of any kind of identification of cause.

We’ve only seen one example of a nutter-massacre here recently. Then the guns in the community were drastically reduced - perhaps that helped, perhaps not.

I still think though, that community self-trust is something that should be worked-on as a priority - certainly having readiness might help, but I can’t help feeling that there’s a deeper mechanism to address.

10

The big difference between the violence of Americans today and that of the past is that the average person no longer sits around singing grisly ballads about it.

11

A good point.

However, I don’t think that Americans of old were as passive as you suggest. Grisly ballads were part of the media of the day - these days we can just post it on a message board - or watch CNN. I certainly believe that part of the sense of fear can be ascribed to our modern ubiquitous media. The prevalence of danger might very well be no more than it ever was - but we can now see it better. Are we better off for that? Perhaps the media should be mandated to report the good as well as the bad for the sake of perspective. We certainly see a lot more good than bad in C&F - it’s one of the reasons I like it so much.

12

I like that thought.

13

Pleas try to keep in mind that we have more good than bad in American society as well. Hard to remember after watching the news most days, but true. The problem is that we are geared mentally to watch out for threats; it’s a matter of survival. Thus good people don’t make good news and become a very huge, very silent–i.e., invisible–majority.Frequently the cops catch a burglar, to find evidence of dozens of burglaries–a neighborhood which seemed crime-ridden to those living there only required ‘pest control’ to rid itself of one nasty little rat.


Look at Redwolf’s situaton for example.

Bad guys–3

Good guys–
5 or 6 squad cars full
400 teens
school staff of, what, probably 30? (Including our brave Red and her supervisor, staying out of the safe area to warn unsuspecting parents of the danger–God love 'em both!)

Lots more good than bad there, but what we naturally remember tends to be the 3 guys who could hurt us.



As for civilization falling apart during civil war…well, there’s a lot of long-term social and economic stress/pressure there that will warp society and strain it to the breaking point. More-so IMHO in the larger cities where most good and foods have to be shipped in from elsewhere (supply lines that can get disrupted) than in small agricultural areas (where the food is grown and people now their neighbors better).

When I think of the base human response to an emergency, I prefer to think of the civilian response to the Oklahoma City Bombing. I saw images of people on the streets diving into the wreckage to carry children to a triage area, groups of men in business suits running down the road using a table as a stretcher for a badly injured man, two other men carrying a chair bearing a woman with blood streaming down her face.

Because it happened only a couple years after the Rodney King incident, the ensuing riots and news/talk show focus on race relations–and the fact that I was glued to the TV looking for word of more survivors for a week or so seeing regular replays of the footage-- I took note of the ethnic makeup of the people I was seeing. Black and white and brown men carrying a table as a stretcher, brown and black and white hands comforting and aiding a crying asian child, men and women of different colors asking one another “are you OK?” or just holding one another in shock, a bearded white man calling out “I found one!” while carrying a small dark-skinned girl to the triage area…then pausing to hold her close and look back at the wreckage of the building.


A few bad people might make humanity seem …well, inhumane, but truthfully human beings are basically good…otherwise the human race would’ve destroyed itself long ago.

14

While I understand CountryKitty’s explanation, and I agree that there is more good than bad, I think that the balance is far closer to the middle than what she suggests. Mitch talks of community as if there is one, but I don’t think that such a thing exists, or if it does, it is only in small pockets, not in the nation as a whole. People in the US are arming themselves to protect against each other, not a foreign invader. No other country has as large a percentage of its population locked up in prison as the US. Where’s the sense of community in that?

And yet there is this terrible hue and cry in the US when anyone suggests guns be taken out of the hands of the general populace.

djm

15

Well, we know the details of the situation now. Someone had reported an armed robbery in progress in the city park that backs up to the school (in fact, the park runs right into the school grounds…only a small sign points out where the park ends and the school’s playing field begins. Kids often cut through the park on their way to or from school, or eat their lunches there). It ended up being a false alarm (The person who reported the robbery was reporting second-hand, as it turns out. He had an extremely detailed description of the alleged robbers when he called 911, and didn’t admit until the cops were there that he hadn’t actually witnessed the robbery, so it’s hard to say whether it actually took place).

Crimes involving guns are actually fairly rare in our community. Once in a while a drug deal goes wrong in the Flats, or someone gets surly after the bars close down on Pacific, but generally speaking we have a pretty safe community here (the biggest problem on the Westside, where the school is located, is the occasional loud party from the college housing, which is why the lady who lives across the street was so concerned…that kind of sudden and emphatic police presence just isn’t the usual thing there).

Redwolf

16

Just an observation:

Back when I was in high school (mid-'70s, a small town in northern California) the school had a trap & skeet club, and a range on school property.

The school provided the shotguns and facilities, and a couple of the teachers volunteered their time. Students just had to pay for the shells and clay pigeons they used up.

Down the hill and half a mile from campus was the free, open to all, local shooting range. And I’d guess that at least half of the trucks in the school parking lot had gun racks (almost never with a gun during school hours - not because it was forbidden, but because it would have been a good way to get your truck broken into).

With that background, I don’t find “guns near the school” necessarily scary. I do find “possible armed robbery next door” and “possible school shooting” scary. And I worry that inability to distinguish between cases leads to overreaction and, eventually, people ignoring alarms due to all the false positives.

I’ve worked in places where they had to threaten job suspension to get some people to honor fire alarms, due to frequent false alarms. I’d hate to see needed, real, alerts ignored because everyone “knows” it’s just a drill or mistake.

17

A couple of the teachers thought it might be a drill, but they followed procedure by calling the office to ask rather than simply deciding they could open the doors and let the kids go (after the second call, the secretary got on the PA and told everyone that it was NOT a drill, and that no one was to be allowed in or out of the building until the principal had announced all clear). Fortunately they haven’t had a lot of lockdown drills…it’s a new precaution the school implemented after the V-Tech shootings. I think they had one drill late last year, and they’ve had no drills this year (I guess they won’t need one now!).

I’ve seen what you describe though, with office fire alarms…people just working away, even when they’re announcing over the loudspeaker “this is not a drill!”

Redwolf