By FRANCISCO E. JIMENEZ
Staff Writer
reporter@sbnewspaper.com
In a post-Sandy Hook society, it’s no surprise that, during a joint meeting on Tuesday between the San Benito City Commission and the San Benito CISD Board of Trustees, the subject of school safety was addressed.
Discussed was the implementation of combined-response procedures and protocols should a school shooting occur locally; this after a gunman, armed with semiautomatic weapons, opened fire and killed 20 students and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012.
“It’s active shooter training,” said San Benito Police Department Assistant Chief of Operations Michael Galvan of classes school and city authorities plan to initiate. “I’m introducing the training to district police. You can use it at any facility that has a lot of employees, even malls or shopping centers, anywhere innocent bystanders (congregate).”
Galvan said that he is introducing the training to anyone willing to participate.
“There are certain things to take into consideration when confronted with a (shooting) situation,” said Galvan. “First step is to make people aware and give them a different perspective, look at what works and doesn’t work.”
Authorities also hope to shorten the amount of time it takes for police to respond should such a situation arise.
“It is my understanding that (the SBCISD) police force is mainly centralized in the city,” Galvan said. “Whenever an active shooter incident begins, it could take five to eight minutes to assemble our force and approach the location. We’re trying to have at least one person in each of those schools to close the gap. We’ll get bombarded with calls if situation arises.”
Concerning the relationship between San Benito city and school district law enforcement, Galvan said, “We’re all just trying to work together. Little by little we’re all going to start training together. We want to start running drills. We hope to start moving forward.”
The training comes after concerns over a Facebook post by a teenager warning about a possible shooting at San Benito High School. According to authorities, it was further warned in said post that the shooting would occur on December 20, 2012.
No such shooting occurred, but city and school district police were on-hand at the high school that day for precautionary purposes, as it was first reported by the San Benito News via sbnewspaper.com.
It has since been alleged that school district police knew of the Facebook status in question as of Dec. 15 and delayed relaying such information to San Benito police.
“That was erroneous,” said San Benito CISD Police Chief Santiago R. Garcia in response to said allegations. “We found out about it on the 19th (of December) at night, and then finally they gave me the name of the little girl that posted that thing (Facebook status in question).”
Garcia said he “immediately” called San Benito police and asked for a supervisor. What’s more, Garcia said he and the supervisor, whom he did not identify, met at a location in the vicinity of where the young girl who allegedly posted the aforementioned Facebook status resides.
“We confronted the little girl, and she said she didn’t know who said it (that there was going to be a school shooting) but that it was just something she heard in the cafeteria a week ago, and it just so happened that’s when the shooting took place in Connecticut,” Garcia said. “So she put it on Facebook. That’s what we learned from the incident. The supervisor wrote a report, and the next morning I let the supervisor know what was going on. This was just something she heard, and just in case she put it on Facebook.”
Garcia pointed to his cooperation with Galvan in organizing the classes to train school district police officers.
“It would be foolish and stupid on my part if I was going to know something serious was going to go down at school and did not ask for help from the local police department,” Garcia said. “I just want the citizens to be rest assured that we will always work closely with city police, as far as we’re concerned.”
“I don’t call him every day to give him a run-down,” Garcia further remarked, “but anything involving a shooting and something else that’s serious, sure I’m going to relay that information to a San Benito PD supervisor.”
Calls to Assistant City Manager Art Rodriguez, who’s tasked with overseeing emergency response departments for the city, such as the SBPD, went unreturned as of presstime Friday.
Meanwhile, Garcia has acknowledged the presence of armed guards at Rangerville Elementary, Riverside Middle School and La Encantada Elementary among other campuses as well as plans to install security cameras.
Citing security purposes, however, Chief Garcia said he could not disclose other campuses in which armed guards may or may not be stationed.
Read this story in the Jan. 27 edition of the San Benito News, or subscribe to our E-Edition by clicking here.
1 comments
I feel more than confident Chief S.R Garcia has the experience and knowledge required to do everything in his power to protect the staff and students of our school district. Mr. Galvan’s professionalism at the SBPD is also a huge plus.
I love this idea…I hope they include students that want to participate too.