Locals school threats multiply in wake of Florida shooting

Less than a week after 17 students and teachers were killed at a Florida high school, photos of a boy brandishing a gun appeared in the social media accounts of San Marcos High School students Monday, raising alarms at the North County campus.

A day later, a 14-year-old freshman was arrested and suspended from Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, accused of making verbal and written threats.

By Friday evening, there were reports of menacing messages targeting five other San Diego campuses and one in Ramona.

In the aftermath of the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. on Feb. 14, local schools are confronting a wave of violent images or messages, some shared online, some scrawled on school property.

In each of the instances — except for the one at Torrey Pines — school and police officials concluded that the threats were not credible and warranted no arrests, but authorities quickly alerted families anyway and increased security on some campuses.

“One hundred percent of the time we’re going to take it seriously, you have to,” said Anthony Barela, principal of Vista High School, which received social media reports of a written threat left on campus Wednesday.

Schools are also taking a more active stance on potential emergencies, replacing traditional lockdown procedures with a new approach developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security known as “run, hide, fight.”

The strategy trains teachers, staff and students to choose the safest way off campus, or into shelter, in the event of a school shooting. And it equips them with tactics to defend themselves in the worst-case scenario, if they come fact to face with someone armed with a gun or other weapon.

“Sometimes locking down isn’t the best option,” said Bob Mueller, executive director for student services and programs at the San Diego County Office of Education. “If the assailant is on the other side of campus… it may be better for me to get my kids, get out of that room and get as far away as possible.”

Records from the state Department of Education for the 2016-17 academic year show the number of students disciplined for weapons possession at San Diego County schools. At the top of the list is Escondido High School, with five students suspended or expelled that year for having weapons on campus. West Hills High, Grossmont High and Monte Vista High, all in Grossmont Union High School District, each had three.

The numbers reflect not only the gravity of the issue, but the attention that educators pay it, officials said.

“At Escondido we are always fairly aggressive and wanted to err on the side of caution, to keep the students safe as well as those around them” said Rich Watkins, director of Pupil Services and Interventions for Escondido Union High School District and the former principal of Escondido High. “Our discipline policy is more strict.”

No guns were found at Escondido High School, Watkins said. Most of the incidents involved knives, and in most cases the students didn’t brandish or threaten anyone with them.

The mere fact that the students had the items was cause for discipline, regardless of intent, he said.

“A knife is probably the most common,” Watkins said. “Some kids who got caught with them work with family members and had the knife for work, or were fishing at Lake Dixon and had a fishing knife.”

The incidents reported this week didn’t involve weapons, but menacing images or written messages. The first local school affected was San Marcos High School, where students reported a photo on the social media site Snapchat, showing a boy in a ski mask, with his face blurred and a gun in hand, and the text “Round 2 of Florida tomorrow” printed over the image.

Police and school officials notified families and identified the person in the widely-shared image as a South Carolina student. The posts reported by San Marcos High students didn’t mention the school specifically, and officials determined that it wasn’t directed at the campus. But they assigned sheriff’s deputies to patrol the school Tuesday as a precaution, and many parents kept their kids at home.

Attendance was about 60 percent of normal that day, Principal Adam Dawson said.

“We really work closely with law enforcement, and take all of the information we receive,” Superintendent Melissa Hunt said. “You drill down to get the best evidence you can… . We investigate, but we’re also prepared.”

Two days later, a host of other threats cropped up at high schools around the county. The San Diego Unified School District Police Department assigned extra security at three campuses — Madison High School, Innovation Middle School and the district’s Creative Performing Media Arts school — after someone reported seeing a threat on Twitter, said Jennifer Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the district.

Another threat, deemed not to be credible, was made against San Diego High School this week.

Police officials identified a seventh-grade student who they suspect posted the message, according to a statement from the district. The Twitter post warned: “Biggest shooting in history on its way. San Diego’s on its way to join the trend. Be ready ha!”

School police interviewed the student and determined that the threats weren’t credible, according to the district.

Vista High School officials launched an investigation Wednesday after students reported finding a written threat on campus about a shooting. Officials said the threat was unsubstantiated, but they took extra security precautions to be sure. On Thursday, a Vista Sheriff’s patrol vehicle was parked on site, and attendance was down by about half, Barela said.

Students who showed up said they were wary, but didn’t want to miss any classes.

Elias Perez, 14, said he and his parents were scared by the threat, but he decided to go to school to avoid the absence and having to make up work.

“They were a little worried,” he said. “They said we should pray before we go to school.”

Charlie Cunningham, 17, said he didn’t feel like he was in real danger because of the threat, but said he’d feel safer if lawmakers enacted stricter gun regulations.

“I think we should look at other countries, and the way they regulate guns,” he said. “We need to start new laws, because the ones we have are too loose.”

Anayetzy Nava, 17, said she saw the message as an opportunistic prank.

“I think it was just a joke that they were trying to make happen so we could get a day off,” she said.

On Friday, the Sheriff’s Department investigated a threatening message at Steam Academy at La Presa in Spring Valley. The message, written on a bathroom wall, said there would be a school shooting that day.

Later, deputies in Ramona reported that a student warned classmates not to come to school because there would be a shooting. Deputies interviewed the student, who said it was a hoax.

While all violent threats require attention, anonymous or generic messages are less likely to signal actual danger, said Mueller, from the county Office of Education.

“When threats are very vague, they’re usually not very credible,” he said. “So in a general way, one of the things they’re looking at are how many specifics are there.”

Details on plans, targets and victims signal more imminent danger, he said. Mass shooters typically follow a pattern of escalating behavior, starting with a real or perceived grievance, that builds into a revenge fantasy.

“The next phase would be planning,” Mueller said. “The revenge fantasy slowly morphs into a plan, and the assailant gets serious about ‘what I would do, where I would do it, how I would do it?’ They start to research, acquire weapons, write things out. The final stage would be acting on it.”

The District Attorney’s Office set up a special team in 2014 that investigates and prosecutes school threat cases, and works to better understand the threats and the people who make them.

They also established a protocol that encourages schools to report threats to the District Attorney’s Office in addition to law enforcement agencies. The goal is three-fold: to identify the person who made the threat, to determine whether that person has the ability and intent to carry out an attack, and to manage the threat posed by the individual.

District Attorney Summer Stephan, who prosecuted an adult gunman who wounded two second-grade girls during a 2010 shooting at Kelly Elementary in Carlsbad, said the response depends on the individual situation.

Sometimes prosecuting a juvenile for threats is appropriate. Sometimes other tactics, including “restorative justice,” are more effective. Through dialogue with other kids, students may better understand how their actions affected those around them, Stephan said.

Over the past few years, the team within the District Attorney’s Office has looked at about 45 cases, 25 of which resulted in the filing of felony charges. Others were resolved through other means, including restorative practices and informal monitoring.

About seven were rejected or dismissed.

In at least two of the 45 cases, Stephan said she believes intervention likely averted disastrous consequences.

“We feel that’s worth it,” she said. “If in two of 45 cases we’ve helped save lives, it’s well-worth the effort.”

Staff writer Lauryn Schroeder contributed to this report.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan