The Blue Valley Schools Podcast

BV Unmuted: Understanding Threats and Their Consequences

• Dr. Tonya Merrigan & District Staff

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Our #BVUnmuted series continues with a focus on school safety, understanding threats and their consequences. Dr. Katie Collier, deputy superintendent for learning, is joined by Interim Chief Simon Happer (Overland Park Police Department) and Dan Carney (Director of Safety & Security) to discuss how Blue Valley ensures a safe and secure environment for our students and staff.

Remember that if you see something, report it! Don’t repost it. 📵

#BVTogether

BV Unmuted Intro:

I think the beauty about our community in the Blue Valley School District is that we can all work together. You're really always just looking forward to just go back to school, just to see the pride that people have in Blue Valley School District year after year is so much fun to watch. You can't find this anywhere else. I am so thankful we live where we live and can have our children in the Blue Valley school systems.

Dr. Katie Collier:

Welcome to Blue Valley Unmuted. We're so thankful to have you with us today. I'm Dr Katie Collier. I'm Blue Valley Schools deputy superintendent and joining me on this segment today is our Overland Park interim Chief Simon Happer and our director of safety and security for Blue Valley Schools, Dan Carney, again, thank you so much for being here. We want to talk today about what we have experienced across the nation and here in our own school district, is this uptick in threats against our schools, and we really want to spend some time today helping our parent community understand the consequences associated with school threats. And we want to help our parents understand what we do as a school district to keep our schools safe. And really we seek to be in partnership with our parents when it comes to school safety, but we're also in partnership with our students. We have a great history of our students being partners with us, and we want to continue to have our students be partners with us. So I am going to go ahead and start with you. Dan Carney, can you explain for us? Help our parents understand if and when we receive a threat against one of our schools that might occur on social media, how do we process that once we receive that information?

Dan Carney:

Well, when we're notified of a threat, we we kind of go into, say, like a red alert mode immediately, we want to do a quick analysis of the threat just to understand it, understand what exactly it is, and then, first and foremost, ensure the safety of anyone who has been threatened, whether that's the whole school, whether that's a specific student or a group of students, obviously, if school is in session at the time that may call for one response versus if it's after school hours. Either way, we're going to get in touch with our local police department, which most of the time is Overland Park, because that's where the majority of our schools are, but we do have schools in Leawood and so on. So we'll get with our partners and try to track down the origin of the threat, talk to any witnesses you know, kind of it basically just opens an investigation. I think it's important to note that when a threat occurs, if it's determined that that meets the elements of the statute for criminal threat, that is a felony and I'm not sure that people know that, but you make a threat, you try to put people in fear by making a threat of violence. That is a felony.

Dr. Katie Collier:

Chief Happer, I wonder if you can tell us, how do you process as our partners in law enforcement threats when they're credible or not credible to our schools?

Interim Chief Simon Happer:

So sure, we're looking right away at the threat itself, and then one of the important things that we have is the school resource officers who are in your high schools, your middle schools, and then working with the district safety and security team to address and see if that kid could be a threat and be credible. Generally speaking, we go out and try to find if we can trace down to where it came from, we go and talk to that individual, talk to the parents, obviously, and we're trying to get to the bottom of the threat. Is it credible? Is it something that could be carried out? Is it something that just got passed on and along and along and actually came from somewhere else? So we're really trying to find that one of the things that we do is we do have a good relationship with a lot of the social media platforms and the companies that run those to get information on those we can find out possibly, where a threat originated. So we look into that, and then obviously, if it's credible, then we take the appropriate action, as Dan said, it is a felony, and if we can prove that, we're going to take them and take them into custody and take them out to the juvenile and take an assessment center and then let the district attorney decide on charging

Dr. Katie Collier:

Oftentimes, when our teens are on social media, they may think that that content that they're sharing back and forth between each other is actually just between them, their small group of friends, they think they may be making statements that are just jokes. So I'm wondering, one, what if something is just a joke, as perceived by this student? And secondly, should they consider that when they're on social media, that content is private?

Interim Chief Simon Happer:

You know, I'm going to say that nothing you put on social media or on the Internet is private. I know there's a belief that Snapchat goes away, Snapchat sees it. And one of the things that we've seen this year is that some of the social media platforms are actually building algorithms to look in for keywords that would lead to something that could be violence against a school that comes up, if it hits that, they're letting us know. And I think that's where you've seen some of the uptick locally is through those sources. So we're having to investigate those so that innocent thing you put out there, whether it's a joke or not, AI doesn't know it's a joke. It just reads it and says, those are the keywords we're looking for, and then we get notified of it.

Dan Carney:

I might add also that we may determine, and actually most of the time, we determine, that these threats are transient, or they're they really pose no real threat, but making the threat is still a crime, correct? And so even though you didn't mean it, even though it was a joke, there, may be legal consequences to that, not to mention all of the other consequences, such as suspension, expulsion from school, losing friendships. There's just a whole list of bad things that can happen as a result of making a threat.

Dr. Katie Collier:

Certainly we want all of our students and all of the adults that work in our schools to feel safe in their learning and work environment every single day. And so I'm wondering, Dan, what should students do if they see something online that they interpret as a threat to school? Who should they report that to? If a parent sees it, should they share that on social media to make other parents aware that it looks like there's a threat against a school? Just what should we do?

Dan Carney:

Well, we've picked up on a little phrase that kind of is very concise. It says, report, don't repost. When you repost, you're keeping the problem alive. You're keeping the threat alive. That may be totally nonsense, but when you repost you cause more angst, and if you just report it, then we can get to the bottom of it. The police department can get to the bottom of it, but I would say if you see something, you feel it's threatening, you can call the local police. It's probably the best and quickest thing to do, especially if it's after school hours. If it's during school hours, you still can call the police department. You can contact the school police officers. We also if, if people want to remain anonymous, we have a Safe Schools Hotline, 239-HELP. If you go to our website, Blue Valley School District and click on the safety tab, you'll find the Safe Schools hotline. You'll also find the p3 tips app, which anyone can use to report anonymously. This is associated with the tips hotline. Everybody's familiar with that Kansas City operates, and you can report a threat there as well. All those things I just mentioned are answered immediately, you know, sending an email at nine o'clock at night to someone in the school district may or may not get addressed right away, because we don't necessarily see our email immediately. So I think doing one of those things is going to get immediate attention.

Dr. Katie Collier:

You know, our school principals go to school to be school principals invested in the education of students. What I'm wondering about is, how can we help our parents understand what qualifies our principals to determine whether or not a threat is of substance or not when they experience a report from a student or a parent? Is that working with our local law enforcement, or is it strategies they've been taught? Can you help our parents understand about how our principals go about this?

Dan Carney:

Yeah, about a year and a half ago, we adopted a threat assessment program called the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment guidelines. This is a program that was developed originally called the Virginia model. Now it's named differently, but it's the same model that Dr. Dewey Cornell from the University of Virginia developed it. And basically what it tries to do, very simple form, is train principals, counselors, school psychologists, police officers to kind of unwrap a threat, to make a determination about whether the threat is transient or substantive. So does it have substance, or is it something that is perhaps a joke, something to garner attention? You know, that kind of thing, that where the person really doesn't pose a threat, which again, is what 90 something plus percent of threats are. So all of our all of those people I mentioned, have been through quite a bit of training to learn this program. It's kind of a five step program, and helps them to unravel these threats that come in to understand them better, to understand what's at the heart of them, what might be causing a student to make a threat, those sorts of things. They spend a lot of time going through scenarios and learning how to do that. It's a program that has been tested for positive results. It's listed in the National Registry of evidence based programs.

Dr. Katie Collier:

I know our principals have taken that training very seriously. All of our staff that our administrators, new to administrative team, have access to that training, and it's just really been invaluable. Chief Happer. I'm wondering, though, what happens when the police department receives information about a threat and it's late on a Sunday night and we're starting school on a Monday, and maybe families or students are aware of a threat and they want to be able to go to school feeling safe Monday morning. What does the department do when those things happen late at night or on a weekend?

Interim Chief Simon Happer:

Well, the first thing I want to make sure and encourage everyone to do is to report them. A lot of times, people look at things and they go, Ah, I really don't want to bother the police department. It's our job. That's what we signed up to do. So when we get those officers, you know, generally, a street officer, district officer, will get that may start looking into it. Generally speaking, we're going to call one of our sergeants and our school resource either for the north end of the city or the south end, so either Blue Valley or Shawnee Mission and St Thomas Aquinas. And we're going to try to find the SRO that would be best to help us out with this. Again, they've all had the training that Dan just talked about, so we give them additional training in being an SRO and how to address these things. So we're going to get them involved a they know the schools. So we're trying to get the an officer involved who knows the school, is aware, has a relationship with the staff and the principal. Because a lot of times we find the principals you know teachers in those schools. They know these kids, and they know whether this, you know, that's probably Johnny joking around, or, no, that that doesn't sound like him. That's, that's, we need to do that so it's looking into that. But, yeah, we, we take them all seriously. There are none that come in and we just look at go, eh? No, we, we're going to investigate it, because the last thing we want is somebody coming to school, you know, bringing their kids unsafe. One of the things we do try to do is then get that information out that we've investigated it and whether it's true or not. But we're also going to work with Dan and his team to maybe have a little stronger police presence around so if it's at a high school, you know, or a middle school, we're going to have a little bit stronger police presence around there, just to kind of calm the nerves of the patrons of the school, the you know, the families, so that they're comfortable going to school. But again, we're pulling in whoever we need if we need detectives. It doesn't matter we're a 24 hour a day operation. We call people in if we need them. And, you know, I've never seen one of our district officer or school resource officers, or, you know, or Dan, not answer his phone in the middle of the night when we have one of these, and that's generally when they come in is when they're at home in the evening and they're texting and chatting and doing all that stuff.

Dan Carney:

You know, I would just add on to that that is so true, and we're so appreciative of Overland Park Police, Leawood police, that they do jump on these in the middle of the night. And I would say this, if your student makes a threat online in the evening, after school hours, you can probably expect a visit from the police department that evening. That is correct, Dan. We will, and that's the thing. You want to get face to face with somebody so you can see their reaction, kind of see how it is, see if the parents understand these things. We're also checking to see if it's a threat they're going to shoot up a school? Is there a means to do that? You know, are there guns in the house? Are those things? Are they secure? That's one of the things we're really looking at, is to build, to build the case, but also to disprove the case, if that's the the angle this goes.

Dr. Katie Collier:

So we've talked about our parents, our students, other community members being partners with us and reporting threats to us. What advice can we give to our parents who may have teens on social media? How can we help parents help their students from engaging in something online that would create really some serious consequences for them?

Interim Chief Simon Happer:

Well, I think, I think the first thing is to know what social media your kids have and what they're doing on it, and take a look every once while, sit down with them. Talk it. Don't make it accusatory. Don't make it you know, I got you, but it's a sit down and just say, because one of the things that a lot of people don't know is there's a lot of companies, besides the Overland Park Police Department, there's private companies that are doing a search of your social media history, and they're looking for things in there, and they have companies that do that now, and they'll go back and search. So when you're looking for a job down the road, and we find it, every once in a while, we'll have an officer that's liked something when they're 16, and, you know, it's probably inappropriate, and so we talk to him about it. It doesn't mean you're out, but it does raise some, you know, it raised some flags that we need to look into. But the biggest thing I can say is parents need to really sit down and understand what their kids are doing online. You know, are they liking jokes that are inappropriate, that could, you know, have consequences down the road? Are they bullying? I mean, these kids are bullying each other a lot online, whether it's through texting, but a lot of it's through social media, and it's easy to do, because you can be anywhere in the world and bully somebody so you know, and that's important for the parents to know, because there's a lot of other things that parents wouldn't even know their kids having a problem, but they might be able to find out by sharing that experience and again, making it just, hey, you know, we're just going to go through and talk about this. There's not consequences, unless there's something really bad there. But you know, just that building that relationship and that trust with your child.

Dan Carney:

We really do need parents help on this, this, this problem. We've seen a, we've seen a real uptick in the number of threats since the school year began, and it's it's causing kids to be fearful. And we get reports of that from parents. They email us, they say, I kept my child home today because I heard this. Heard about this threat. We have parents who say that their kids are just generally afraid to go to school. And I kind of look at that is kind of collateral damage from the from the threat itself, and I think that that is a serious problem. I was looking at this study done by Harvard University. They have a Center on the Developing Child, and basically their studies showed science, showed that early exposure to persistent fear and anxiety and chronic anxiety can have lifelong effects on brain architecture. In other words, it can diminish a child's ability to learn, and it can, it can last across the lifespan to have to deal with this chronic fear and anxiety about, am I going to go to school and be harmed by someone? So it is a serious, serious matter. And again, it's not just that it's eating up police resources that obviously is extremely important, because there's a lot of things out there that really need police intervention. But it's, it's causing this, this kind of, it's, I think nationally, it's causing this kind of temperature of fear and anxiety around schools, and it's just not not a good thing.

Dr. Katie Collier:

We want our students and our schools to feel safe, connected, happy, and certainly, we know thatwhen students have a wide range of emotions that can be overwhelming, they are looking for opportunities and ways to communicate that sometimes that may be communicated in an ineffective way through something on social media, but we do want to remind our parents and our students that we have mental health teams in our schools who are absolutely ready and available To assist and support a student or a family. Sometimes it's a matter of just talking out a particular topic or situation. Maybe it's the need to have access to broader resources. I know our students have access to our SRO officers, our Overland Park officers that are in schools that they make connections with, that they can talk to and process, and we can help a student and a parent have access to resources outside of our school. So we certainly want to remind everyone that those things certainly are available. I know our time is probably about running. Running up here, I want to make sure I give you each an opportunity. If there's anything that you as we wind up, that you would really want parents to know on this topic, certainly, our schools are safe, right? While we've had an uptick in threats, we've seen that locally and nationally. In Blue Valley, we have many layers to security, and our schools are safe. We want to continue to have our parents feel really confident sending their children to our schools every day. But is there anything else on this topic that you would want to make sure you had, that you had the chance to express before we wrap up today?

Interim Chief Simon Happer:

Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest things is, if a parent sees something, then say something to us. If a student sees something, say something please, when you see these things, let us know we'd much rather investigate something and find it's not true than not be able to investigate it and something happened. If you have a question, call your school probably has either a school resource officer in it from the police department or from the Blue Valley School Police. And that's one of the things. And one of the other things I want to say is to say is for people, is that that school resource officer program is met as a resource for the kids and the teachers. Yeah, they do provide security or a presence in the building, but really it's those kids and building the relationship with the kids that helps us investigate these and do it quickly is because the school resource officers get to know the kids, and they build those relationships, and they're a resource. And that's what we want. Enforcement is the last thing we want to do in the school. The first thing we want to do is be a counselor and a teacher.

Dr. Katie Collier:

Thank you so much for that. I've gotten to see evidence of those relationships making a big difference in our schools. So we're so thankful to the Overland Park Police Department, Leawood Police Department, and what, what you all do for our students and families? Dan?

Dan Carney:

You know you said, you said that kids are safe in schools, and that is, that's true. That's true statistically, that they're safe in schools, safer in schools than they are at home, statistically speaking, but nevertheless, we continue to attempt to reduce the risk of harm to kids in schools every day, and we continue to attempt to push that risk down to zero, knowing we can never get there. We can never get to zero risk. But we continue to layer in different things, whether that be physical security or whether it be protocol personnel. We continue to try to push that risk down, down, down. I don't know if people know. We have 24 total police officers that work in Blue Valley Schools every school day, half of those are Blue Valley campus officers with over 200 years of city police experience under their belts, and the other half are school resource officers provided by the city. We have tried to address learning points from past school violence, and put them into play here. You know, we just instituted a couple years ago a program called crisis alert that allows every single employee in our in our in our school district to lock down a school immediately if they see a threat, if they, if they see or, you know, respond to a threat that's occurring in our schools, because communication has been such a huge problem in past school shootings, we continue to layer these things in to make them safer and safer and safer. But at the end of the day, I think we need, we need parents help to solve this, to really solve this problem. We need your help.

Dr. Katie Collier:

Chief Happer, thank you so much for joining us today. Dan Carney, thank you for joining us. Parents. We appreciate your ongoing partnership. Our goal is to continue to provide safe schools every day where students can have great, wonderful, meaningful learning experiences, a positive school experience. We appreciate everyone's partnership, and we look forward to the next edition of Blue Valley Unmuted. Have a great day.