Quick Response Diffuses Threat on Campus

By JESS RAU
 
At approximately 5:45 pm on Monday, July 19, the St. Paul’s School (SPS) Security Department and Advanced Studies Program (ASP) Director Michael Ricard initiated a campus lockdown in response to a potential threat on SPS property.  The Concord Police Department had just informed the SPS Security Department that they had reason to believe that there was a suicidal subject in the wooded areas on the outskirts of campus. Upon confirmation of this fact and quick deliberation, Mr. Ricard and the SPS Security Department activated the school's emergency alert system.

Using a vehicle description provided by the Concord Police, SPS Security personnel located the subject’s vehicle just outside the back gate of the grounds, but were unable to locate the subject.  Using cell phone coordinates, the Concord Police confirmed that the subject was in the woods just off campus and then contacted the New Hampshire State Police when they were unable to determine his exact position.  The State Police located the subject using a tracking dog and found him to be unarmed.  The subject was compliant as he was led out of the woods to a police car.

“We didn’t necessarily think that the person was an imminent threat to ASP community members, but we didn’t want to risk their safety if he wandered towards or onto campus,” said Mr. Ricard.  As a precaution, Mr. Ricard made an announcement to the ASP community that there was a potential threat on campus and it was necessary for all community members to stay inside, maintaining a lockdown until the subject was escorted off of the grounds by the police.

This marked the first time the SPS emergency alert system was used for an actual emergency, rather than just drills.  Mr. Ricard said that he wished he could have gotten more information out to the community during the lockdown, but he indicated that “the issue was resolving itself quicker than anticipated and the information was continuously changing.”

“We were lucky that this situation corrected itself in about 25 minutes following the alarm,” said Director of Security George Pangakis.

“Had this incident continued longer into the evening, we would’ve probably made a decision to assemble our crisis management team,” said Mr. Pangakis.

The crisis management team consists of a group of school administrators that gather in a state of emergency who are assigned tasks in an effort to respond to the emergency.  As the subject was soon brought into custody of the Concord Police, however, such steps were unnecessary and Mr. Ricard was able to send out an “all clear” message to the community.

Mr. Ricard noted the convenience of the time at which they were notified of the threat, as it came during a weekly meeting for all ASP interns, which made it easy to quickly inform all interns of the situation and establish a plan of action.  One intern from each dorm was asked to stay in the dining hall with students and all entrances to the dining hall had an intern or faculty member on guard.  Other interns were sent to go back to the dorms and make sure that all students were safely inside.

“We were very impressed with the response of the ASP community to our alarm and observations were made by our officers that ASP students responded appropriately and we were very appreciative of that,” said Mr. Pangakis.

Considering that it was the first time that SPS needed to activate the emergency alert system, Mr. Pangakis said that things went well.  He also indicated that the SPS Security Department will be making some internal and logistical changes to “better facilitate getting this message out to more of the community.”

“The goal here is to communicate with as many people as you can in a short period of time,” said Mr. Pangakis.