SHARING

IDEAS & 

RESOURCES

to Keep Our Nation’s

Schools Safe!

VOLUME IV

National Law Enforcement and 

Corrections Technology Center System 

NLECTC
CONTACT 

INFORMATION

Michael O’Shea, Senior Law Enforcement Program Manager

National Institute of Justice

U.S. Department of Justice

810 Seventh St., NW.

Washington, DC 20531

(202) 305-7954 

michael.oshea@usdoj.gov

Lance Miller, Director

Justice Technology Information Center

700 N. Frederick Ave.

Bldg. 181, Rm. 1L30

Gaithersburg, MD 20879

(800) 248-2742

(301) 240-6731

lmiller@justnet.org

Visit http://www.schoolsafetyinfo.org for access to up-to-date 

publication and website resources. New success stories similar to the ones in this publication are added on an ongoing 

basis. To suggest a success story topic, contact Senior Writer 

Becky Lewis at rebecca.l.lewis@lmco.com
INTRODUCTION

Apps. Databases. Tiplines. Videos. Educational campaigns. 

Throughout the United States, schools, law enforcement agencies and communities keep on coming together, continuing to 

create innovative and groundbreaking solutions to the persistent 

problems of violence, bullying, security breaches, gang tensions 

and social media abuse.

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Justice Technology Information Center (JTIC), part of the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) System, 

bring you more of these solutions in this fourth volume of 

Sharing Ideas and Resources to Keep Our Nation’s Schools Safe. 

We want you to know about the people who are searching for, 

and finding, positive ways to address these problems. We want to tell you about 

the technologies and strategies that are working across the country, and we want 

to hear from you about what’s going on in your area. In addition to the success 

stories that fill the three previous volumes in this series, we continually post new 

ones on SchoolSafetyInfo.org, the JTIC website dedicated to school safety news, 

information and technology. In addition to downloadable files of Volumes I, II 

and III, our site includes links to a wide range of resources and materials produced at the federal, state and association levels, and provides access to school 

safety-related publications and videos from NIJ and the NLECTC System. You 

can also learn about School Safe – JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment App 

for Schools, and obtain instructions on how to download it. 

In this fourth volume, you will read about an educational video on cybersafety 

produced by a concerned law enforcement officer in Georgia; new approaches 

to training implemented by the Indiana State Police and the campus police at 

the University of Massachusetts-Amherst; a free campus safety app developed 

by a team of students at the University of Michigan; an educational campaign 

produced by high school students in Connecticut; and a number of other 

school-community-law enforcement collaborative projects.

We encourage you to investigate and decide what is right for you and what has a 

place in your school setting. First responders, school staff, students, parents and 

INTRODUCTION • i
community leaders continue to work cooperatively to combat the myriad safety 

issues that affect our nation’s schools and provide safe and healthy environments 

in which to learn. As your schools and your communities work together with 

local public safety professionals to do the same, we hope that you will continue 

to use NIJ, JTIC and SchoolSafetyInfo.org as resources.. 

Sincerely,

Lance Miller 

Director, Justice Technology Information Center 

lmiller@justnet.org

ii • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CONTENTS

Protect Your School....With the Launch of an App..............................................iv

UMass-Amherst Active Threat Training Teaches a 

New Way of Thinking........................................................................................... 4

Training Program Aims to Change the Paradigm ................................................ 8

Free Online Training Promotes Safe Sports Events ........................................... 12

Video Encourages Parents to Teach “Digital Citizenship”................................. 18

SPK UP NC Offers Anonymous Way to Help..................................................... 22

Rutgers Takes Simple Approach to “Text a Tip”................................................ 26

Project Safe Campus Gives Students a Voice .................................................... 30

A “Companion” to See You Safely Home.......................................................... 34

AlertID Partners With Law Enforcement to Promote Safety.............................. 38

Danbury Students Learn How Important it Is to 

“Say Something”................................................................................................ 42

Sunnyside-Law Enforcement Partnership Generates 

Community Support........................................................................................... 46

Pasco County Uses Social Media as “Go To” Resource..................................... 50

Project Safety Net Emphasizes Team Approach................................................ 54

Students Lead the Way in Fight Against Bullying.............................................. 60

Campus, Community Partnerships Strengthen 

Emergency Response......................................................................................... 64

Missouri Integrates Emergency Operations Into “1Plan”.................................. 68

NYSSA Connects Schools With Affordable Emergency 

Response System ............................................................................................... 72

Virginia Evaluates Threat Assessment Processes ............................................... 76

Conference Provides Lessons on Stopping Bullying at 

Young Age.......................................................................................................... 82

School Emergency App an “Eye Opener” for 

Emergency Dispatch .......................................................................................... 86

Youth Crime Watch Turns Students Into Peer Educators................................... 90

CONTENTS • iii
CHAPTER 1

PROTECT YOUR SCHOOL....

WITH THE LAUNCH OF AN APP

By Becky Lewis

October 2015

Download JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment 

App for Schools, the new app from the National Law 

Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center 

(NLECTC) that takes you step-by-step through your 

school to identify and address trouble spots. You can 

conduct a physical assessment of your campus — 

inside and out — by walking around and answering a 

series of simple questions using your hand-held device.

iv • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 1: PROTECT YOUR SCHOOL....WITH THE LAUNCH OF AN APP • 1

This free app, available for iOS and Android, helps promote awareness and foster prevention using Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) 

principles, and allows school resource officers (SROs), school administrators and 

other first responders to receive no-cost emergency planning assistance without 

leaving campus.

“Keeping schools safe is a top priority and everyone in the school community 

has a part to play. School Safe – JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment App for 

Schools helps school resource officers and administrators take a good look at 

their schools, inside and out. It points out trouble spots and reinforces good 

practices,” says Sean Burke, president of the School Safety Advocacy Council 

and school safety consultant with the NLECTC System. “The app presents 

the pertinent questions for you to consider as you assess the safety of your 

campus.”

Divided into 10 sections, School Safe – 

JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment 

App for Schools begins by helping users 

summarize a school’s demographics and 

assessment history, then examines various 

internal and external considerations. For 

example:

• Is student access to parking areas restricted to arrival and dismissal times?

• Are trailers/portable classrooms connected to the school’s central alarm 

system?

• Is exterior lighting checked on a 

frequent basis? Is school staff encouraged to report outages? Are poles in the parking lot numbered to assist 

individuals who report?

• Do visitors present a photo ID to be scanned through a records checking 

system before they are issued a visitor badge that must be visibly worn at all 

times? Must visitors check out when they leave?

• Does the school have pre-prepared To-Go Bags? Does each classroom have a 

To-Go Bag? What do they include?

Users can start assessments and return to complete them at their convenience, 

and School Safe allows them to attach a photograph of the school. The app 

generates an easy-to-read report in PDF format that can be shared with supervising officers, school system administrators and other stakeholders. School 

Safe – JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment App for Schools can generate 

assessments on multiple schools, and users can update existing assessments with 

new information, allowing for easy retrieval and storage in a central location.

“School Safe– JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment App for Schools can be 

your partner in performing a thorough assessment of your facilities,” Burke says.
To receive your free copy of School Safe – JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment 

App for Schools, visit https://www.justnet.org/SchoolSafe/ to request a code that 

will allow secure download to one device. The app is available for both IOS and 

Android. School Safe – JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment App for Schools 

is available only to vetted criminal justice professionals and school administrators; please make your request from an official agency email address, not from a 

personal email address.

A Beta Tester Says “Thumbs Up”

By Jon E. Carrier 

As a beta tester and contributor to 

School Safe – JTIC’s Security and 

Safety Assessment App for Schools, 

I found the app easy to understand 

and believe it can be easily used by 

most practitioners.

One of the great things about 

School Safe– JTIC’s Security and 

Safety Assessment App for Schools 

is that there were contributors from 

all over our country working in the 

area of school safety who gave 

feedback and opinions that helped 

inform the content.

I found that even to an experienced 

school safety assessor like myself 

who has conducted many school 

security surveys, School Safe – JTIC’s 

Security and Safety Assessment App 

for Schools proved cost-effective, 

relevant and full of good questions 

in a format that was easily understandable and user-friendly. The end 

product easily translates to a printed 

report for the user.

School Safe – JTIC’s Security and 

Safety Assessment App for Schools 

takes into consideration Crime 

Prevention Through Environmental 

Design (CPTED) principles and poses relevant questions for assessors 

– for example, it includes questions 

about video cameras, signage and 

visitor check-in systems. In conclusion, if you are a school administrator, school security director, school 

security officer or a law enforcement 

officer working in the area of school 

safety, School Safe - JTIC’s Security and Safety Assessment App for 

Schools is a valuable addition to 

your professional tools.

Jon E. Carrier is the current president of the Maryland Association of 

School Resource Officers (MASRO), 

a member of the Executive Board of 

Directors of the National Association 

of School Resource Officers (NASRO) and a full-time school resource 

officer with the Anne Arundel County Police Department in Maryland. 

Anne Arundel County Public Schools 

are ranked No. 42 on the list of 

largest school districts in the United 

States according to the 2014 American School & University Top 100 

(http://asumag.com/research/2014-

asu-100-largest-school-districts-usenrollment-2012-13).

2 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 1: PROTECT YOUR SCHOOL....WITH THE LAUNCH OF AN APP • 3
CHAPTER 2

UMASS-AMHERST ACTIVE 

THREAT TRAINING TEACHES

A NEW WAY OF THINKING

By Becky Lewis

November 2015

911, what’s your emergency?

I’m in Dickinson. There’s a shooter. I heard shots in the 

next classroom. Send the police, hurry!

I need your location, where are you?

I’m in Dickinson, send them NOW. I’m going to hide. 

Hurry!

But where...Oh no, she’s gone. I don’t where she is.

4 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 2: UMASS-AMHERST ACTIVE THREAT TRAINING TEACHES A NEW WAY OF THINKING • 5

In Amherst, Mass., birthplace of poet Emily Dickinson, there are five institutions 

of higher education: University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Amherst, Smith, 

Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges. Every one of them has a Dickinson Hall.

Knowing your physical location – not just by name, but by address – is just one 

of the takeaways the UMass-Amherst Police Department wants to impart to students and faculty during Active Threat Training. The 90-minute program, offered 

on request, includes a 20-minute video and related discussion with an overall 

goal, according to community policing Officer Brian Kellogg, of “sending you 

away with more questions than you had when you came.”

“We tell them we’re not there to give them the answers. Rather, we want them 

to think about what the answers could be,” Kellogg says. “We try to go over 

what the options are, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide what you will do.”

UMass-Amherst uses a three-pronged 

approach: Get Out, Hide Out/Keep 

Out and Take Out. It has similarities to 

the Run Hide Fight approach, but is 

based on “Shots Fired: When Lightning 

Strikes,” a video produced by the Center for Personal Protection and Safety.

Officers start the post-video discussion 

by comparing active threat training to 

fire safety: “Everything here where we’re 

sitting is fire-rated and on every corner 

there’s a map on how to get out, and 

there are fire alarms on every corner. We 

ask if anybody can tell us the last time 

someone was killed in a school-related 

fire, and it’s been about 70 years. Then 

we ask if anybody can name the last time there was an active shooter, and unfortunately, you usually only have to go back about a week.” 

“In the vast majority of active threat situations, those that are killed are still 

sitting in their chairs. There’s been no decision to act,” Kellogg adds. “We want 

them to learn to look at this through the eyes of survival. At Virginia Tech, for 

example, there was one classroom where students jumped from a second-floor 

window and survived, and another where they barricaded the door and then lay 

down on the floor. He did shoot through the door, but he hit no one.”

One of the first questions asked during the training is what would participants 

do first when faced with an active threat, and the standard answer is call 911. 

When asked who they’re calling, some participants said that call would go to the 

campus police; others, to the Amherst Police Department. However, if they’re 

calling from a cell phone, as is likely, the call goes to the Massachusetts State 

Police, and in the hypothetical situation that starts this article, it’s not easy to determine a caller’s physical location from a brief cell call. Therefore, “it might be 

best to just have us on speed dial. That’s just part of what we call pre-planning.”
Pre-planning also emphasizes having a safe evacuation route in mind and 

knowing a secure location if you need to hide: “We were training a group of 

custodians in the campus center, and we gave them a hypothetical situation 

where there was a shooter right outside the restaurant. We asked them how 

they would evacuate and they said – as we knew they would – they would use a 

stairway near the training room. We asked them where that stairway came out, 

and only one or two had ever used it and knew that it came out right in front of 

the restaurant – directly in the shooter’s path.”

To help participants avoid such outcomes, the training encourages awareness 

of and familiarity with surroundings. While the video plays, Kellogg and his 

colleagues scout the area near the training room, and then come back with 

questions such as: 

• Where would you go to lock the doors and be completely secure? Does 

the nearby copy room have a deadbolt? What about the restroom? 

• If you’re in your office and can’t go out the door, how would you break a 

window? If there’s nothing in your office now that would break a window, 

what could you put there that you could use: a brick, a toolkit with a 

ballpeen hammer? 

6 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
• Think about which way the doors 

open. Barricades are little help if 

the doors open out and don’t lock. 

• Are there shades on the windows, 

and if not, what other way might 

you cover them?

“We can’t cover every possible situation that might occur, but we can train 

you to think in an entirely different 

way. We make them think through the 

options. Time is the most important 

factor in managing this type of situation, and pre-planning gives you 

your best chances of surviving,” 

Kellogg says.

“When it comes to ‘Take Out,’ we do answer a lot of questions about selfdefense and ways to improvise an attack,” he says. An important scenario 

addressed by the training at this point goes something like this: 

• You hid behind the door, hit him in the face and he dropped the gun. Now 

he’s getting up: What do you do? You may need to hit him again, and this 

time, hit him hard enough to render him unconscious.

• You get some people who say ‘I’ve had military training,” or “I know how to 

handle a gun, I’m going to pick it up and hold him at gunpoint.” The police 

are coming to look for a shooter. They’ll come through the door quickly and 

see someone pointing a gun. Are they going to give you time to explain or 

will you end up getting shot? Is your best bet to not have a gun in your hand?

“We tell them the media covers school shootings massively, but school shootings are not the highest risk. Your chances are actually greater of being involved 

in active threat situation in public areas like in a mall or an open food court 

somewhere, and you can apply this training when you’re at work, when you’re 

at school or even when you’re at home,” Kellogg adds. 

To read about the Active Threat Training in more detail, visit https://www.umass.

edu/umpd/active-threat-program. For more information on how UMass-Amherst 

developed the program and lessons learned, contact Officer Brian Kellogg at 

bkellogg@admin.umass.edu.

CH. 2: UMASS-AMHERST ACTIVE THREAT TRAINING TEACHES A NEW WAY OF THINKING • 7
CHAPTER 3

TRAINING PROGRAM AIMS 

TO CHANGE THE PARADIGM

By Becky Lewis

September 2015

The sound of gunfire brings the math quiz to a halt, far 

faster than the effect of a “pencils down” command. 

As a second shot follows the first, there is no hesitation 

on the part of the teacher or her students: they’ve 

practiced and planned, and they know that as soon as 

she checks her cellphone for a text message that may 

give them the location of the intruder, they’re either 

running for the stairs at the end of the hall or piling 

desks in front of the door.

8 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 3: TRAINING PROGRAM AIMS TO CHANGE THE PARADIGM • 9

One path to fostering that sense of readiness in a school’s students and staff 

lies through Active Shooter Preparedness Training offered by the Indiana State 

Police (ISP). The agency’s full training package, including a Microsoft® PowerPoint presentation, presenter’s notes, a lesson plan and several videos, can be 

accessed and downloaded via the ISP website.

Sgt. Chris Kath of the ISP’s school safety program explains that the agency 

recently revised and expanded this curriculum to make it more specific and 

user-friendly: “Our intention is that not only can an Indiana State trooper go in 

and use it to give presentations, but that a police officer in another state can 

also use the training materials as well.”

In fact, it was a presentation by an 

officer from another state, F/Sgt. Kenneth Runk of the Maryland State Police 

at the 2013 National Association for 

Pupil Transportation, that gave Kath 

the idea to develop videos that train 

bus drivers on how to handle an active 

shooter situation (See “Video Training 

Encourages Bus Drivers to Plan for 

Safety,” https://schoolsafetyinfo.org/

indiana.html.) These videos, which 

can also be used independently, make 

up one component of the expanded 

training package. 

Moving from the original training’s 

basic concept of “Run, Hide, Fight” 

in 2013 to the expanded 2015 version, Dr. Richard Hogue, program content 

developer, used suggestions and input from participants and trainers from more 

than 150 training sessions to modify the program to its present form. The ISP 

package expands on those concepts and adds a Prevention component because 

“we feel like prevention is always the best option. The program identifies early 

warning indicators and encourages schools to set up intervention teams that 

can monitor and assist troubled individuals. And in the event that an incident 

does occur, planning and practicing are key. We know that law enforcement and 

educators will give their lives to save children, but we are not asking them to die 

for the children in their charge. Quite the contrary, we ask them to exercise these 

response options so they can live to protect those in their charge.”

“We’re trying to teach people to think more like law enforcement officers do, 

to be aware of their surroundings. As a police officer, when I go to a restaurant, 

I don’t sit with my back to the door. I pay attention to what’s going on around 

me. We need administrators, teachers and bus drivers to prepare the same 

way,” Kath says. “If you look back at Columbine and other shootings, a lot of the 

victims were those who just froze and did nothing. We firmly believe if you’re 

prepared and you have a plan beforehand, if you know what you’re going to do 

if something like that happens, you stand a better chance of living through it.”
In order to help people improve those chances of living, the training expands on 

the “Run Hide Fight” options, starting with adding “Escape” to the Run component. Hogue says the objective is not for students and staff to run blindly (possibly straight toward the shooter), but rather to make intelligent and well-planned 

decisions that lead to a controlled escape.

“Then in the second component, we’ve added “Lockdown” to Hide because 

we want people to do specific things, like barricading doors and taking cover, as 

opposed to just hiding. We’ve found that people who just hide aren’t as safe as 

they think they are,” he says. “And under Fight, we’ve expanded that with information on how to improvise weapons and how to figure out strategic locations 

to gain the advantage of surprise.” 

All of these expanded components come together to foster greater cooperation between law enforcement and educators, as presenting the training gives 

officers an opportunity to become familiar with a facility and its staff, and it also 

gives educators an opportunity to interact directly with law enforcement. 

“This program’s overall objective is to change the paradigm, to provide prevention strategies and response options. In addition to that, another big thing that 

really sets it apart from some of the other programs out there is that we filmed 

10 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 3: TRAINING PROGRAM AIMS TO CHANGE THE PARADIGM • 11

the video in Indiana schools with Indiana students and teachers, rather than 

using actors,” Hogue says. “You don’t 

find many active shooter videos that 

are both school-specific and deal with 

the components of Run, Hide, Fight. 

Most of those trainings instead seem 

to focus on the workplace.” 

Because of the scarcity of similar products, ISP has received inquiries from all 

over the country, and Hogue says “it’s 

great to be able to tell them it’s free 

when they ask how much it’s going to 

cost them. There’s something that the 

Indiana State Police should be really 

proud of.”

“There are companies out there that train individuals for a profit, but we’re a 

public service agency and we’re doing this for free. We’re putting it out there for 

any school or any law enforcement officer that wants to improve school safety,” 

Kath says.

And he emphasizes that plans for improvement always need to take school policies into consideration: “We are advocating that they plan, and if they see flaws 

in the policy, address them now. The fact of the matter is, schools know their 

jobs better than we do. We’re just coming in and showing them the law enforcement perspective.” 

To review and download the training program, visit http://www.in.gov/isp/

3191.htm. 
CHAPTER 4

FREE ONLINE TRAINING 

PROMOTES SAFE SPORTS 

EVENTS

By Becky Lewis

June 2015

There’s that angry voice again, the one cursing at the 

opposing team and the officials. Ah, there he is, with 

the red jacket... and the red face. 

At the approach of the slight woman in the “Event 

Staff” vest, the man becomes even more belligerent, 

shouting “What do YOU want?” in her direction.

“’I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but you seem upset. 

Can I help you with something?”

12 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 4: FREE ONLINE TRAINING PROMOTES SAFE SPORTS EVENTS • 13

Although the soft approach might seem to many people to be the wrong way 

to address this problem, according to free online training on staffing sporting 

events, as often as not it succeeds in immediately calming unruly spectators 

down, thus averting fights that could end up erupting to involve the entire 

crowd. When this approach doesn’t succeed, event workers who’ve completed 

the Safe Sports Zone training have learned other alternatives to use to try to 

defuse the situation. The training also addresses many other ways they can help 

keep games safe and fun for spectators and teams alike, including stopping 

trouble at the gate, building positive relationships with students and other fans, 

and being aware of potential trouble “hot spots” such as the concession stand 

at halftime (for more details, see sidebar, “7 Steps to Event Success.”)

“We train them to handle a crowd by 

breaking it into sections and scanning 

each section every 30 seconds. We 

want them always looking up into the 

crowd and always thinking. We teach 

them to look for anger issues, to identify loud voices. It’s usually just one 

or two people who get out of control 

and start trouble. We teach them to 

identify potential troublemakers by 

what they’re wearing and remember 

that, because sometimes they move. 

And we teach them to defuse anger,” 

says Jay Hammes, former athletic 

director at William Horlick High School 

in Racine, Wis., and creator of Safe 

Sports Zone.

Training also covers paying attention to behavior, rather than profiling by physical characteristics: event workers learn to watch spectators’ hands and eyes, 

looking for people who keep their hands out of sight or who constantly scan the 

area as if looking for an escape route. It’s all part of working to make events safe 

and enjoyable for everyone. 

“If you go to a school, any school, during the day, you have to show a photo 

ID. When the dismissal bell rings, that policy stops, and yet education through 

activities continues, in fine arts and drama as well as in sports. The fact is, you 

have more visitors coming in after the dismissal bell than during the school day,” 

Hammes says. “Too often in this country, we wait until there’s a tragedy and then 

react instead of doing something proactive.”

It was reaction to a near-tragedy that led Hammes to develop Horlick High’s 

sports event training program, which eventually became Safe Sports Zone. In 

2003, Hammes left an away basketball game where his school held a comfortable lead, and walked into gunfire, “with bullets whizzing past my ear and hitting 

the mortar behind me.” Although police never determined whether Hammes 

was the intended victim or just in the wrong place at the wrong time, it changed 

the way the Racine school approached athletic events.
“I went back to school on the following Monday and gathered our troops 

together. We came up with a good plan, and my colleagues from other schools 

started to say, ‘you need to share this,’ ” Hammes says. 

Safe Sports Zone offers the training component online for free (there is a cost 

for in-person training), and users incur no obligation to use the website’s other 

services. Hammes hopes that school superintendents and principals who learn 

about the online training will make it a requirement for their staff members. In 

addition to the one-hour video component, the package includes a downloadable syllabus and a post-test that results in certification by the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association. (The present form of the training 

flows continuously rather than being segmented into separate lessons, but a free 

10-part mobile app version is in development.)

One administrator who would like to see it included with required training in his 

state and area is Kent Doades, athletic director and assistant principal at North 

Knox Junior/Senior High School in Knox County, Ind. Doades participated in 

a Safe Sports Zone training session at a conference in May 2015, came back 

and completed the online training, and not only encouraged his own school’s 

coaching staff to take it, he also recommended the training to the Indiana state 

athletic directors’ association as a course that could be included among those 

that coaches statewide can take to meet training requirements.

14 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 4: FREE ONLINE TRAINING PROMOTES SAFE SPORTS EVENTS • 15

“This was the first training I’d found related to afterschool and sports events. 

As athletic director, I have to supervise every school sports event, and I picked 

up some good tips on different ways to maintain security at sporting events,” 

Doades says. “One thing I can do right away is have more bodies and more eyes 

at our events. Currently it’s me, our principal, our other assistant principal and 

our SRO. Having more staff at our events and giving us a few more pairs of eyes 

would be pretty easy to implement.”

7 Steps to Event Success

According to the free online training, there are seven steps involved 

in promoting safety at afterschool 

sporting events:

1. Select the Event Management Team. Members of the 

team should include the public 

address announcer, local law enforcement, legal representation, 

administrators and trainers. Tips 

include dressing alike, possibly 

with custom t-shirts or vests; 

standing up during games; and 

not using personal cell phones 

during an event.

2. Develop a Master Plan for the 

Event Management. Consider 

possibilities such as bad weather, 

fire and fights. Plan how to evacuate the area. Develop drills and 

practice repeatedly.

3. Protect the Gate. Emphasize 

Crime Prevention Through 

Environmental Design (CPTED) 

principles when possible in 

renovations and design; possibly 

institute visual searches and the 

use of cameras, and consider increasing lighting to deter crime. 

 4. Build Positive Relationships 

with Students and Fans. 

Emphasize that attending high 

school events is a privilege, not 

a right. However, event workers 

need to understand that meeting 

anger with anger does not work, 

and early intervention plays an 

important role in de-escalating 

tension. 

5. Be Aware of Hot Spots. Increase 

presence at areas known for 

tension, such as the concession 

stand at halftime and the parking 

lot after the game.

6. Define Spectator Parameters. 

7. Identify All Fans. Require photo 

IDs from all spectators, both students and parents. Many schools 

that have instituted this policy 

have seen a decline in fights and 

criminal activity.

Safe Sports Zone provides bulk shipments of free posters that can help 

promote safe sports activities to the 

executive directors of state athletic 

directors associations; contact the 

office in your state to find out more. 
At North Knox, a 600-student, grades 7-12 consolidated school serving several 

small towns, most of the school’s coaching staff can be found in attendance at 

football games, and “if they’ve taken the training, they will know what to watch 

for even if they aren’t there as paid staff.”

According to the training, there are more than 18,000 schools in this country that 

offer afterschool activities, and if each school averages 25 individuals involved in 

coaching and monitoring those activities, that means nearly a half-million people 

work at afterschool sporting events, most of them with little or no training.

“Budgets have been slashed and public schools in particular are hurting. The 

lack of training is not caused by apathy, it’s caused by a lack of money,” Hammes 

says. “People say you can always find the money, but you can’t. We’re not in this 

for the money, we’re trying to help schools, and that’s why we’re offering the 

free training.” 

To access the free online training, visit http://safesportzone.telspanexam.com/. 

The program received national recognition from the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security in 2013.

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CH. 4: FREE ONLINE TRAINING PROMOTES SAFE SPORTS EVENTS • 17
CHAPTER 5

VIDEO ENCOURAGES 

PARENTS TO TEACH 

“DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP”

By Becky Lewis

February 2016

The headlines seem to repeat themselves, day 

after day: Sexting Scandal Hits Local High School. 

Dangerous Challenge Trending on Social Media. 

Teens Face Criticism for Insensitive Video Gone Viral.

To many parents, it might seem the answer is to take 

away the smartphones, recycle the tablets and ban 

access to the family computer. 

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CH. 5: VIDEO ENCOURAGES PARENTS TO TEACH “DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP” • 19

Digital Safety in the Wireless World (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xhf5LhBQfw), produced by the Paulding County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office, lets them know 

there’s another way.

The 12-minute video, written and narrated by Det. Lenny Carr, uses a two-part 

approach to facing social media challenges: First, educate your children about 

online dangers, then teach them digital citizenship.

“There was a time when kids went to certain places to hang out, to be with their 

friends and to be cool. Now the hangouts are virtual, and if you ban your kids 

completely, they’ll be left out,” he says.

“And they’ll find a way to get online 

anyway.”

Instead, Carr advocates letting children and teens earn trust by proving 

they can responsibly use social media 

in a limited fashion, then increasing 

their privileges in incremental steps, 

similar to first letting them walk alone 

on their home street, then later allowing them to leave the immediate area 

on their own. Along the way, parents 

should monitor their behavior, and 

they might even consider entering into 

a “contract” outlining both parties’ 

social media responsibilities. 

That’s the message Carr had been presenting throughout Paulding County 

(located in suburban Atlanta) in parent education seminars for several years. His 

presentation first explains to parents many of the ways in which their children 

have access to the entire world from their bedrooms, then talks about how they 

can guide their children to responsible social media use. In early 2015, his supervisor in the Crimes Against Children Unit, Lt. Starry Kilgore, tasked him with 

creating a video to help spread that message even further. Carr worked with the 

Board of Commissioners government access station, Paulding County Today 

and Jody Martin, media production coordinator for PCTtv, and subcontracted 

with local videographer Jeffrey Harkins, then spent several months researching, 

writing and refining his message. 

The resulting script for Digital Safety in the Wireless World addresses issues 

such as:

• Parents need to realize that granting their children unsupervised online access means that they are figuratively letting their children lock their bedroom 

doors and leave their homes without telling their parents where they’re 

going.
• Taking and posting selfies can be problematic, even if they aren’t explicit. 

Geocoding gives an individual’s exact location, and the posts often tell who 

else is with someone. Selfies may even give away information that could lead 

to home burglaries.

• There are myriad social media apps available, and the ones youth prefer 

change constantly. However, there are excellent apps that parents can use to 

monitor and control online behavior, and they should be alert for potential 

problems such as cyberbullying and gang recruitment.

The video resulting from these efforts went up on YouTube in early December, 

and although it’s too soon to tell, Carr hopes it results in a reduction in the number of calls he gets from concerned parents.

“Parents call me and say ‘Here’s what is going on with my kids and their smartphones,’ and they ask what they should do. I’d much rather get that kind of call 

than ‘I found naked pictures on my kid’s phone,’ but if they have found photos 

like that, taking everything away is not the answer. They need to set ground 

rules and work to re-establish trust and responsible behavior,” he says. “I’ve 

studied the tools that are out there, especially the free tools that help you put 

filters on smartphones and Wi-Fi. A lot of parents don’t understand how easy 

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CH. 5: VIDEO ENCOURAGES PARENTS TO TEACH “DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP” • 21

that is and that they don’t need to pay 

for professional help. There are ways 

they can protect themselves and their 

children, and when I point out these 

filters can also help protect them from 

identity theft and even burglaries, that 

really gets their attention.”

Although Carr now asks his parent 

callers/visitors if they’ve seen the 

video, he’s also going to do more than 

wait for them to find it online: “I see 

this as a nice tool to have for in-person 

presentations too. When I go to upcoming events in the schools in March 

and April, my plan is to play the video, 

then expand on it in my presentation.”

Also, Sgt. Ashley Henson, Paulding County’s public information officer, reached 

out to the local school system, which first reviewed the video and then contacted parents via robo-call and an email with a link to encourage them to watch it. 

And the project doesn’t end here: Carr plans to develop a second video targeting “tweens and teens,” once again calling on informative resources that include 

an informal focus group of local youth, Lt. Kilgore, Sheriff Gary Gulledge and the 

Georgia Bureau of Investigation. (GBI recognized Carr for “his exemplary service 

in keeping our children safe from online predators” in December 2015.)

For more information on the project, contact Sgt. Ashley Henson, Public Information Officer, Paulding County Sheriff’s Office, at (770) 505-5535 or email 

ashley.henson@paulding.gov.
CHAPTER 6

SPK UP NC OFFERS 

ANONYMOUS WAY TO HELP

By Becky Lewis

April 2016

Speak Up for Your Friends. 

Speak Up for Yourself. 

Speak Up for the Voiceless. 

Speak Up for School Safety.

See It. Tip It. Stop It.

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Those are the messages being pushed out to teens in North Carolina encouraging use of the state’s new tipline, SPK UP NC: messages created by teens, for 

teens, to encourage use in the 42 schools that make up the pilot project area, 

and by the end of the 2016-2017 school year, in schools throughout the state. 

A project of the North Carolina Center for Safer Schools, the app development 

grew out of school and community forums held shortly after the Center opened 

in 2013. A concern consistently raised at those meetings was a need for students to have a truly anonymous, standardized method of reporting concerns 

to school resource officers, school administrators and teachers. The Center 

invested 18 months in developing SPK UP NC, and students played a key role 

throughout that development process. 

Kym Martin, executive director of 

the center and a participant in the 

National Institute of Justice Comprehensive School Safety Initiative Topical 

Working Group on State School Safety 

Issues meeting held in February 2016, 

says Center staff realized early in 

the process that unless students 

actually used the state’s new app, 

it would prove of little use to the 

state’s schools. In addition to 

creating a 25-member advisory 

group made up of students from 

throughout the state, the Center 

named Kolby Holland, an 18-year-old 

senior at South Lenoir High School 

and a Governor-appointed member 

of the Safer Schools Task Force, as its leader. The group’s members named the 

app, had input into product design and came up with their own marketing messages. (To view their testimonial promotional videos, including one from a girl 

whose classmate brought a gun to school, visit https://www.ncdps.gov/DPSServices/Center-for-Safer-Schools/Resources/For-Students/spk-nc.)

“I have three teenagers, my deputy director has two teenagers, the project 

manager from our IT company has teenagers, and we all knew, because of what 

we heard from our families, that we had to be sensitive to what students would 

like and the ways in which they would use it,” Martin says. “We brought the 

students to Raleigh for the focus group meetings and tried to make it interesting 

for them with lunch and tours of the governor’s mansion and state government 

buildings. We really wanted to make the development process and the app itself 

as student friendly as possible.”

Part of that effort includes emphasizing that the purpose of SPK UP NC is not 

to get other students into trouble; rather, it is, as the student-created hashtag 

says, a way of giving a voice to the voiceless, Martin says: “Students can use it 

to help others who can’t speak up for themselves. They could potentially save a 

CH. 6: SPK UP NC OFFERS ANONYMOUS WAY TO HELP • 23
life if someone is considering suicide or self harm. A lot of students are afraid of 

saying anything, and we hope that when they see student-driven messages, they 

will realize SPK UP NC is a safe way to report.”

And the app not only provides a safe way to report in English, it also 

translates Spanish and other languages into English-language messages that 

SROs and administrators can understand. (The promotional campaign includes a 

Spanish-language testimonial video and a special outreach component for 

Spanish-speaking students and their families.)

Although it’s safe and anonymous, Martin does emphasize that SPK UP NC isn’t 

meant to replace relationships of trust students may have already developed 

with their SROs, guidance counselors or teachers: “If you feel comfortable 

talking with a trusted adult, you should continue to do that. This is just another 

way you can get information into the right hands.”

Because students can use SPK UP NC anonymously to put information into 

their hands, some school administrators initially voiced concerns they would 

be swamped with tips, but so far, the pilot schools have found the load to 

be manageable. A majority of the tips received through April 2016 focus on 

bullying, drug use and alcohol abuse, but enough tips have also come in about 

inappropriate verbal behavior between faculty and students to cause Center 

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CH. 6: SPK UP NC OFFERS ANONYMOUS WAY TO HELP • 25

staff to consider developing training in 

that area. The Center is also developing guidelines and procedures for 

school districts that already have an 

anonymous reporting tool of their own 

in place, although those districts are 

also encouraged to consider switching 

to SPK UP NC. The North Carolina 

General Assembly has mandated that 

all schools must have some type of 

anonymous reporting in place by the 

end of the 2016-2017 school year, and 

for schools that choose to participate, 

SPK UP NC offers a number of key 

features:

• Works on computers, laptops, 

tablets and smartphones.

• Capable of including attached photos and videos.

• Able to understand tips submitted in 32 different languages.

• By state law, all data collected using SPK UP NC is exempt from the public 

records law.

“I have grand hopes for this,” Martin says. “I hope it will help students to be 

good citizens, and when they become adults, they’ll be community changers 

and world changers because they’ve learned that when you get involved, good 

things happen.” 

For more information, visit http://speakupapp.tips/home.php or contact 

Kym Martin at (919) 324-6380, email kym.martin@ncdps.gov.
CHAPTER 7

RUTGERS TAKES SIMPLE 

APPROACH TO “TEXT A TIP”

By Becky Lewis

March 2016

Say Jen, that package...wasn’t it sitting in the same 

place yesterday when we walked to class?

You’re right, Latisha...it’s kind of suspicious, isn’t it? 

Maybe we should let the police know? I left my phone 

in my room, use yours and send them a photo. They’ll 

check it out.

Don’t you need an app for that? I never downloaded 

it...I don’t even know what it’s called!

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CH. 7: RUTGERS TAKES SIMPLE APPROACH TO “TEXT A TIP” • 27

You don’t need an app...didn’t you see the online article the other day? Just 

send them a text. The photo will go straight to dispatch, and then right out to 

the cops on patrol. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes.

At the Rutgers University New Brunswick campus, sending a tip or a question to 

the University Police Department really is just that simple. Launched on February 5, the system received 200 messages in its first month of use, ranging from 

a photo of a suspicious package to requests for security escorts to questions 

about if bad weather had closed the campus, and Chief Kenneth Cop believes 

the text messaging system already has been a benefit to the university’s public 

safety.

Under the pilot program (tentatively 

planned for expansion to the Camden and Newark campuses later this 

year), students, staff and faculty can 

text a message directly to dispatch 

by sending “RUNB” and the body of 

the message to 69050. Messages go 

directly to the Communications Center 

and receive an immediate response 

from a trained dispatcher. 

“It’s very easy to use. Basically, one of 

the screens turns a different color, indicating there’s a message in the queue, 

and they respond to it by initiating a 

normal text message conversation. If 

they determine it’s appropriate, they 

can broadcast the messages out to the officers who are on patrol,” Cop says. 

“From the students’ perspective, it’s instantaneous. They don’t have to load 

anything to their smartphones, it’s just a matter of sending a text message.”

Believed to be one of the first – if not the very first – systems of this type in the 

nation, Rutgers’ text-a-tip had its origins in a text-messaging application used 

only during football games. The university’s Student Government Association 

then approached the police department out of concern for campus safety, 

suggesting expansion to Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. Cop says his 

department felt it would be more appropriate to go to a 24/7 system, and the 

idea took off from there. 

“We have very good rapport with our SGA. We met with the president and 

talked about how to develop a safety application that would meet our needs. 

We looked at a couple of apps that were commercially available and decided 

that, hands down, what was important was the ability to communicate via text, 

so we decided to go with a simpler approach,” Cop says. The SGA provided the 

necessary funds to develop the project.
“It’s a modern way to communicate and we want to be a part of that. The No. 1 

thing is having an open line of communication with the community in terms of 

being able to send and receive messages. Better communication means more 

and better information,” Cop says. 

Although the primary users of the system are students, the entire Rutgers 

community can use it to send in tips and photos, or ask questions. The system 

initially has drawn publicity from the university and local media, and in the future, will be pushed out to incoming students as part of orientation. Cop says it’s 

anybody’s guess how much use all that promotion will generate, but the department is prepared for a large volume of messages. And word has already spread 

to other universities, who have approached Rutgers to find out more about how 

the system works.

“They’re attracted by the simplicity and the desire to get into the modern age of 

communication. Texting is a modern way to communicate and other universities 

are seeing that, and they want to be a part of it,” he says. 

For more information, contact Melissa Marrero, Director of Public Relations, Marketing & Communications, at (848) 932-4956, email mmarrero@aps.rutgers.edu

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CH. 7: RUTGERS TAKES SIMPLE APPROACH TO “TEXT A TIP” • 29
CHAPTER 8

PROJECT SAFE CAMPUS

GIVES STUDENTS A VOICE

By Becky Lewis

February 2016

He struck back against an eighth-grade bully. He was 

the one who was disciplined.

Because he had an exemplary record, he received 

probation and stayed in school. 

Scenarios similar to this one probably play out in 

schools around the country every week, maybe even 

every day. The one described briefly above actually 

happened to a boy more than 30 years ago, a boy who 

30 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 8: PROJECT SAFE CAMPUS GIVES STUDENTS A VOICE • 31

grew up to have an eight-season National Basketball Association career, but 

who never forgot what it felt like to be a victim who had nowhere to turn. When 

Crime Stoppers of Michigan approached Willie Burton to ask for his help in 

promoting a pilot initiative to allow students to submit tips on a variety of 

school-related issues, including bullying, he was quick to say yes to becoming 

project manager for Project Safe Campus. The pilot project – a joint effort among 

Crime Stoppers, local law enforcement and participating schools – started in 20 

schools in Detroit and received 43 tips in the first 60 days of use in 2015.

“Project Safe Campus has been an 

asset to the Detroit Public Schools Police Department. Not only have they 

helped in our crime reduction and 

investigation efforts, but we have been 

able to act on tips identifying troubled 

students, some of whom were even 

contemplating suicide, and the district 

was able to intervene before a tragedy 

occurred. The Project Safe Campus 

model also helps to instill in students a 

sense of empowerment and personal 

responsibility that will serve them well 

throughout their lives,” says Assistant 

Chief Craig W. Schwartz.

By the end of 2015, Project Safe 

Campus had spread from Detroit to more than 300 schools in eight counties. 

Students can submit tips to Project Safe Campus by calling 1-800-SPEAK-UP, by 

texting 274637 or by going online to www.1800speakup.org. The system preserves anonymity by sending calls to Canada, where they are scrambled, then 

sent back to staff for processing.

“It hit close to home with me because in 1981, I was on the verge of being 

expelled because I retaliated against someone who made it a point to make my 

day miserable,” Burton says. “Because of that, I wanted to empower the small 

persons. I wanted to give them a way to report the things they saw, but couldn’t 

talk about without putting themselves in further jeopardy.”

Burton says Crime Stoppers of Michigan has provided all funding needed for the 

pilot program, and Project Safe Campus will begin to seek other funding sources 

to expand the program throughout more of the state. 

“This is a student-led initiative, we’re just here to manage it for them,” he 

says. “They’re reporting everything you can think of, from arson to fights, from 

cyberbullying to theft. Suicide is really big. Some of these tips have been very 

valuable. Students have been taken to the hospital and their lives saved because 

they attempted suicide and someone reported it.”
Patricia A. Murray, former principal of East English Village Preparatory Academy, 

credited Project Safe Campus with allowing her security team to stop a potentially dangerous situation: “We were able to curtail a potentially dangerous situation 

recently when one of our students called in a tip about a possible confrontation 

involving several students that was rumored to go down at our school. We were 

able to have security and administration in place to keep an eye out and to 

prevent anything from happening. Project Safe Campus allows our students to 

feel safe to call and report wrong doings without the negative stigma of being a 

‘snitch’.”

The project does allow students to collect a reward of up to $100 for an actionable tip; in order to maintain confidentiality, callers receive an ID number to use 

to track the progress of the tip and claim any reward. However, Burton says that 

97 percent of those eligible never claim the money, which may then be awarded 

to a school’s student government fund instead: “They just want to help, they’re 

not doing it for the money.”

To find out more, visit http://projectsafecampus.com/.

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CH. 8: PROJECT SAFE CAMPUS GIVES STUDENTS A VOICE • 33
CHAPTER 9

A “COMPANION” TO 

SEE YOU SAFELY HOME

By Becky Lewis

September 2015

Glancing at the time on her phone, she realizes the 

library closed five minutes ago, and that means her 

roommate should be on her way home. Just as she 

begins to worry about her friend’s safety, she receives 

a push message: On the other side of the campus, 

her roommate has opened the app that sent out the 

push, a message that asks her to be her friend’s virtual 

“companion” as she walks home. She answers yes, and 

the worry dissolves, because as a virtual companion, 

she will know where her roommate is on every step of 

her way to safety. 

34 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 9: A “COMPANION” TO SEE YOU SAFELY HOME • 35

Companion, a free mobile app available in both iPhone and Android versions, 

allows users to place family and friends on a contact list whose members receive 

requests to act as virtual companions whenever the app is opened. Accepting 

a request links them to an interactive map that shows the user virtually walking 

a designated route. In the meantime, the user simply drops the phone into a 

pocket and starts moving, keeping aware of surroundings and letting Companion (and the virtual companions) keep an eye on things as well.

Companion detects changes in movement created by actions such as running or 

falling, deviations from the designated route and disconnects between headphones and jack. When activated by any of these triggers, Companion immediately asks the user “OK?” If 15 seconds pass without a response, the app alerts 

the designated companion(s) the user may be in trouble; simultaneously turns 

the phone into a noisy personal alarm; and, if the user attends a college or university that collaborates with the app, instantly notifies campus police/security. 

(The user, if able, may also call 911.)

Version 2.0.3, released in August 2015 

to a worldwide market, has received 

extensive national and international 

publicity. The resulting hundreds of 

thousands of downloads in a short 

time has been a startling and welcome surge of growth for the team of 

University of Michigan students that 

created the app in 2014. Lexie Ernst, 

a co-founder and business major, says 

a group of friends were bouncing 

around ideas about what they could 

do to address the important issue of 

campus safety by leveraging technology, and they came up with the idea 

to create Companion. Winning the 

Michigan Business Challenge through the university’s Ross School of Business 

and Zell Lurie Institute helped get the project underway. 

“We worked on it for a few months and released Version 1.0 in November 2014. 

It was a slow growth student startup, with a few thousand downloads over a few 

months, and it was exciting for us because it was our first project,” Ernst says, 

adding “When we hit 5,000 users, we had a huge party.”

The burst of publicity after the release of the revised version, including articles in 

Business Insider and Tech Times, resulted in a hundred times as many downloads, and “we didn’t know what hit us. Overnight, it seemed, we had a halfmillion users.” 

Interest in Companion has spread from college campuses to include parents 

who want to use the app to keep track of their young children and to working 

adults concerned about elderly parents. And while the user base spreads and 

grows, the team makes plans to expand its collaboration beyond the Ann Arbor 

Police Department to other campus police/security departments across the 
country, getting them to tie into the app so it can contact them directly. They’re 

also working on collecting data on spots where users pull out their phones and 

activate Companion’s “I feel nervous” feature, with plans to analyze reports and 

map trouble spots that might merit increased public safety attention. The Companion team is also looking into further potential funding sources.

“It’s very important to us to keep this free to users,” Ernst says. “I have a heavy 

school schedule and a lot going on and it all makes life crazy, but I know we’re 

doing some really important work here. We live in an information age where so 

many things are possible. If you feel there’s an issue that needs to be addressed, 

today’s technology makes it possible for you to do something... and we are.”

To learn more about Companion, send an email to founders@companionapp.io. 

You can also visit the website at http://www.companionapp.io/

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CH. 9: A “COMPANION” TO SEE YOU SAFELY HOME • 37
CHAPTER 10

ALERTID PARTNERS WITH 

LAW ENFORCEMENT 

TO PROMOTE SAFETY

By Becky Lewis

September 2015

The “ding” of an incoming smartphone notification 

interrupts her train of thought, and for a moment, she 

considers not looking right away. Giving in, she glances 

at the screen and freezes: The alert tells her that for 

the third time this week, the same gray SUV has been 

spotted slowly circling through the area near her 

daughter’s school as the day moves toward its close. 

Other priorities forgotten, she heads out the door to 

“treat” her little girl to a ride, rather than a walk, home 

from school.

38 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH.10: ALERTID PARTNERS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PROMOTE SAFETY • 39

Created in the aftermath of a lost child incident that fortunately had a happy 

ending, AlertID started six years ago as a way to provide parents with safety 

information. With encouragement from local, state and national law enforcement 

(including the FBI), the free app has expanded its services to also include virtual 

neighborhood watch; smartphone notification and email alerts on crime reports, 

fires and severe weather; and a vast library of resources for school administrators and parents on topics that include school safety, alcohol and drug abuse, 

bullying and cyberbullying, cell phone and Internet safety, and gang violence 

prevention. 

AlertID founder Keli Wilson says it 

all started in 2009, when she and her 

husband became separated from their 

three children at a park for about 45 

minutes: “I realized I didn’t have the 

information I needed to give to security to help them find my children. Our 

original idea was to create a secure 

website where parents could store 

photos and other identifying information about their children, but over time 

it has become so much more.”

Drawing on information from local 

public safety agencies, various national crime databases and sex offender 

registries, AlertID allows users to sign 

up for alerts in as many neighborhoods as they wish, letting them track activities near their children’s schools, their own workplaces and the homes of other 

relatives as well as their own residences. And whether they use AlertID on their 

computers or through a smartphone app, the service includes two-way communication, allowing them to submit information and post “watch out” photos and 

information for their neighbors.

“We work cooperatively with many law enforcement agencies across the country, 

often tying directly into their CAD [computer aided dispatch] systems so we can 

grab information and push it out to our members. It doesn’t provide house numbers but our users know the vicinity of incidents,” Wilson says. “And with most 

state sex offender registries, users get all the details. You know if they move, you 

know if they change jobs. We’re also tied directly to the National Weather Service for severe weather alerts, and McGruff and the National Crime Prevention 

Council [NCPC] provide us with the tips and prevention information our users 

search in our Live Safely Resource Center.”

In addition to partnering with NCPC, AlertID also works with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and other organizations. Since its 

inception in 2009, AlertID has:

• Delivered more than 350 million public safety alerts.

• Expanded membership to more than 30 countries, including Canada and 

Mexico.
• Expanded national sex offender data and alerts to cover the homes of more 

than 270 million people, and expanded local crime data alerts to cover more 

than 80 million people in the United States and 65 million people in England.

All of these things come together to make a difference in so many people’s 

lives,” Wilson says. “There was an incident we heard about where a suspicious 

vehicle followed a little girl home from school. Her mother reported it to police, 

but she also posted the information as a community alert, so all members within 

a one-mile radius knew to be on the lookout for this automobile.”

She also cites other success story examples, including one involving an older 

neighbor who befriended a little boy, another about a real estate agent who 

offered to let a mother and child stay with him while they searched for a home 

in a new town: Thanks to AlertID, both were found, in time, to be registered sex 

offenders.

“This started as a passion that I could do something to make the world a better 

place, and that motivates me to keep going every day,” Wilson says. “We really 

encourage everyone to sign up for it, to use it to help themselves and prevent 

tragedies or crimes in their lives.” 

To learn more about Alert ID or to sign up, visit www.AlertID.com

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CH.10: ALERTID PARTNERS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PROMOTE SAFETY • 41
CHAPTER 11

DANBURY STUDENTS LEARN 

HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO

“SAY SOMETHING”

By Becky Lewis

November 2015

One knew students who self-harm. One knew a girl 

who wanted to kill herself. Another formerly attended 

Newtown, Conn., schools. And the fourth knew one of 

the children who died in the December 2012 shooting 

at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Each had a personal reason for banding together to 

make the “Say Something” project at Danbury High 

School a success. Now, they hope to produce a free 

42 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH.11: DANBURY STUDENTS LEARN HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO “SAY SOMETHING” • 43

toolkit that school resource officers, school administrators and teachers can use 

to start their own community awareness efforts.

The four students – Lizzy Newbold, Yago Zoccarato, Natalia Szurawski and Isabel 

Gustems – took on the Say Something campaign as a class project, but all of 

them brought a special passion to the classwork because of their past experiences. The project focuses on encouraging students to be aware of signs of suicidal 

behavior, being bullied and substance abuse, and reaching out to responsible 

adults such as school resource officers, counselors, teachers and administrators for help. The campaign they spearheaded included activities ranging from 

a poetry contest to a photo booth, with students encouraged to share their 

support via social media; from a “Wear Green” Day to the four seniors giving 

class presentations to freshmen; from bulletin boards carrying signatures of 

student support to an assembly with Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, Danbury 

Mayor Mark Boughton, Danbury Superintendent of Schools Sal Pascarella and 

Mark Barden of sponsoring organization Sandy Hook Promise, who lost a son in 

Newtown shooting incident.

“We all had individual reasons for 

wanting to spread the word,” says 

Szurawski. “I had a friend who told me 

she wanted to commit suicide, and 

I told someone and got her help. At 

the time, I didn’t know the signs and 

signals to watch for in someone who is 

suicidal, and now every student here 

at Danbury knows those signs and 

signals thanks to the program. 

“After the assembly, she came up on 

the stage and took my hand and said 

thank you. It was a very emotional 

moment for me.”

“We rolled this out in conjunction with 

Sandy Hook Promise, and what we started here in Danbury has really caught fire 

throughout the state. We’re sponsoring a kickoff program, which will include a 

web component, for representatives from other schools around the state,” says 

Danbury Principal Gary Bocaccio, adding that because Danbury is only seven to 

eight miles from Newtown, many students have connections there.

Two students with connections are Gustems and Newbold. Gustems, who 

previously attended Newtown schools, said her friends who live there told her 

their younger siblings were terrified about returning to school, and “that was 

extremely disheartening. School is important not just for education, but for the 

social aspect. I feel this program can make a change in communities so students 

feel safe and welcome in their schools.”
Newbold, who took on Say Something as her Peer Leadership class project 

before the 2015-2016 school year even started, knew a girl who died in the 

Newtown shooting, “so when I was approached over the summer about taking 

this on as project, I felt passionate about it. If we can implement this in all the 

Danbury schools and then throughout Connecticut, we can build on the hurt 

in the community and be a positive influence to keep something of the same 

nature from reoccurring.”

The approach to Newbold came via Susan Schullery, who teaches the Peer 

Leadership class. Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit organization, had developed 

the Say Something approach and offered information via its website (www.

sandyhookpromise.org), but hadn’t had a lot of success with getting schools to 

implement the program. An email brought a suggestion to Schullery that someone from her Peer Leadership class might take on implementing Say Something 

in Danbury, and she says when she read about it, she decided she could find a 

student who would “have the passion” for the project. What she didn’t expect 

was to find four.

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CH.11: DANBURY STUDENTS LEARN HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO “SAY SOMETHING” • 45

“Lizzy kicked it off with a PowerPoint presentation to all teachers 

districtwide. Her passion became 

contagious to the others, who also 

had their special reasons for becoming 

connected,” Schullery says. “It goes 

much deeper than just a project with 

them. I remember Yago commenting that he didn’t think it would go 

beyond the walls of the school, but it’s 

turned into something really big. They 

hope to put a legacy in place that they 

can leave behind, and they’re creating 

a toolkit that other schools can use to 

implement it as part of this legacy.”

Zoccarato may have initially thought 

the program wouldn’t reach beyond the walls of Danbury High, but he says that 

when the team rolled out the planned activities, the other students caught on 

quickly. “They were proud to take it on and proud to be a part of it,” says Zoccarato, who became involved because he had friends who were self-inflicting pain, 

and he feared that suicide could be the next step. That led to his involvement in 

the Say Something launch and the development of the toolkit.

“I can’t say how proud I am of them for taking the initiative to sustain this,” Bocaccio says. “They’ve rallied our community and all the students feel like they’re 

working toward a common cause. We hope to have a similar effect in other 

school districts throughout the state. Our superintendent has brought it forward 

to all the other superintendents in the state and challenged them to make it a 

priority by participating in the kickoff meeting. This is going viral across Connecticut, and we’d like to see it spread across the country.”

“This isn’t just a project, this is a movement. We’re changing not only our community, but all the surrounding communities as well. There’s no stopping this,” 

Szurawski says.

For more information, contact Susan Schullery at schuls@danbury.k12.ct.us. 
CHAPTER 12

SUNNYSIDELAW ENFORCEMENT 

PARTNERSHIP GENERATES 

COMMUNITY SUPPORT 

By Becky Lewis

October 2015

Sergeant, there’s been an accident in the drop-off zone 

over at the middle school. No injuries, but the drivers 

are getting a little testy with each other, and we need 

an officer to keep things under control.

I’ll get someone out there just as soon...wait, school 

security is calling, they’ve got someone nearby and 

they’ll handle this one for us.

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CH.12: SUNNYSIDE-LAW ENFORCEMENT PARTNERSHIP GENERATES COMMUNITY SUPPORT • 47

Direct access to police radios and an arrangement that lets the school system use their special security agents (who are off-duty sworn law enforcement 

officers) to handle some 911 calls is just one aspect of a strong collaborative 

relationship between Tucson’s Sunnyside Unified School District and local law 

enforcement, a relationship that earned the partnership a 2015 Exemplary 

School Safety Initiative Award from the School Safety Advocacy Council. 

“The school district averages almost 10 calls to 911 every day, and all of them 

need to be followed up. We hire off-duty officers to work at the high schools, 

and if it’s something we can deal with right away, we send that officer and let 

the sergeant know that we have it,” says Frank Morales, the district’s director of 

security.

“Giving the schools full access to 

police radios, rather than only allowing them to use the radios to contact 

us in an emergency, is very unique,” 

says Sgt. Will Corrales of the Tucson 

Police Department. “If we need their 

assistance, they’re right there to respond, and it’s really great to have that 

capability.”

The strong partnership that allows the 

easy radio access and resulting support has been more than 20 years in 

the making. In October 1993, when a 

Desert View High School student was 

shot and killed on campus by another 

student who was on probation, school 

officials and local law enforcement saw the incident as a call to action. At a time 

when other school districts seemed reluctant to have a law enforcement presence on their campuses, Sunnyside started its long history of close collaboration 

with the Tucson Police Department, hiring off-duty police officers to become a 

part of daily campus life while the city added a police liaison on each campus to 

coordinate the off-duty police officers. At the same time, Morales became the 

first juvenile probation officer assigned directly to the district, adding another 

component to Sunnyside’s quest to end school violence on its campuses. He 

moved over to the school security director position when it was created in 2000.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time and we’ve reached the point where law 

enforcement feels comfortable sharing with us, and our students, families and 

teachers feel comfortable with what law enforcement is doing,” says Public Information Director Mary Veres. “In contrast, many of the school districts around 

us are struggling to relate with local law enforcement. That’s what caught the 

attention of SSAC and earned us the award.”

Morales says that Sunnyside reaches out to law enforcement in a variety of ways, 

such as inviting officers to dine with students and staff in school cafeterias and 

welcoming law enforcement recognition and promotion ceremonies to school 
facilities. When it comes to hiring off-duty officers to work special duty in the 

schools, the district looks for ties to the community in its selection process and 

places great emphasis on officers’ customer service skills. Morales checks in 

with Corrales frequently and spends time riding with him in his patrol car just to 

help him keep on top of things, which recently led to the two of them working 

together to help a lost child find her way home. 

“Because officers are seen on campuses all the time, no one thinks their 

presence means something is wrong. They’ve developed positive community 

policing relationships and the community knows that law enforcement is here to 

help,” Veres says.

“At some point in almost everyone’s life, they will need law enforcement assistance, and we want them to feel comfortable with calling for that help when they 

need it,” Morales says. “We want them to know that law enforcement is here to 

help in any way they can. We emphasize customer service skills and we’ve kind 

of become a model for the rest of Tucson.”

Because of that positive relationship-building, when a student who knew 

Corrales well witnessed his father’s attempt to kill his mother, the sergeant was 

able to work with the boy to help him get through the crisis, and “we still have 

a positive relationship. These kids are growing up with a positive feeling about 

law enforcement, and we’re seeing it pay off. We don’t see the fights we used to 

see. We don’t see the violence we used to see.”

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CH.12: SUNNYSIDE-LAW ENFORCEMENT PARTNERSHIP GENERATES COMMUNITY SUPPORT • 49

Veres adds that it isn’t just the boots on the ground that work together with the 

school district, it’s something that law enforcement leadership has also decided is important, and they’ve dedicated staff time to building the relationship: 

“Leadership on both sides has to be willing to invest time. That’s what we tell 

other school districts, that it has to come from the top.”

“It gives us an opportunity to put a face to law enforcement in schools, to build 

positive relationships with students, staff and the community, and to work on 

crime prevention,” Corrales says. The district and local law enforcement also 

work together on a series of safety drills and developed an emergency response 

plan and a discipline matrix together, an exercise that helped each better understand the other’s viewpoint and enabled them to work toward speaking the 

same language. In addition, 911 dispatchers provide training to school district 

operators on how to deal with angry parents and various crisis situations, which 

also helps improve communications and increase the common vocabulary.

“We’ve had some really good discussions, and now we’re reaping the positive 

rewards,” Veres says.

Contact Sunnyside School District Public Information Director Mary Veres at 

MaryVer@susd12.org or Capt. Bob Wilson of the Tucson Police Department at 

(520) 791-4949. 

The Components of an Award Winner

Sunnyside Unified School District 

offers a number of resources to 

back up its award-winning partnership with local law enforcement, 

including:

• An emergency response plan 

containing policies and procedures to follow before, during 

and after an emergency.

• A student handbook.

• A detailed Incident response 

flowchart.

• Guidelines for schools on contacting law enforcement.

• A series of videos filmed with 

the assistance of the Desert View 

High School theater group and 

local public safety agencies. The 

videos address lockdowns from 

student and parent perspectives, 

and include a Spanish version for 

parents. They were created as 

part of an education campaign 

that addressed responsible 

cellphone use by students during 

a lockdown and told parents how 

to obtain accurate information 

about unfolding situations. 

Sunnyside Unified School District, 

located in Arizona’s Pima County, 

includes an early learning center, a 

2-8 school, 12 elementary schools, 

three middle schools and three high 

schools, with a certified teaching 

staff of approximately 1,200 and a 

student body of around 17,400.
CHAPTER 13

PASCO COUNTY USES SOCIAL 

MEDIA AS “GO TO” RESOURCE

By Becky Lewis

September 2015

We’re in a lockdown! Somebody said there’s a kid 

shooting up the library! Mom, I’m scared!

Holding back the fear started by that text, she jabs 

at the shortcut that takes her straight to the district’s 

School Safety Facebook page, and immediately 

texts back “Bank robbery six blocks from the school. 

Lockdown is a precaution. No worries!” 

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CH.13: PASCO COUNTY USES SOCIAL MEDIA AS “GO TO” RESOURCE • 51

With the start of the 2015-2016 school year, Florida’s Pasco County Schools 

and Pasco County Sheriff’s Office launched Facebook, Twitter and Instagram 

accounts dedicated solely to providing up-to-date information to the community 

about issues related to school safety. A community education campaign including posters, flyers, in-person promotions by school resource officers at Back-toSchool Open Houses and a 20,000-address email blast has encouraged parents 

to use these sites as their “go to” resource for accurate information about 

situations including lockdowns, school bus accidents and major maintenance 

concerns. 

“These days with all the student cell 

phones, as soon as there’s even a drill, 

they start texting their parents, and 

some of the stories can get pretty out 

of hand. And of course, the parents’ 

instinct is to come to the school and 

get their children,” says Linda Cobbe, 

Pasco County Schools Director of Communications & Government Relations. 

“We want to use the sites and the 

promotional campaign to educate parents on what the terms lockdown and 

controlled campus/modified lockdown 

mean, explain why they shouldn’t come 

to the school, and reassure them that 

school staff and our SROs train and do 

drills together and they can trust us to 

keep their children’s safety our top priority.”

In the first week of school, Pasco County used the sites to put out information 

about minor bus accidents, the possibility of closing schools because of Hurricane Ericka and a propane leak at one facility. The school district reposts the 

information through its own social media channels as well, with the sheriff’s office 

taking the responsibility for maintaining the school safety sites.

“All agencies train for critical incidents, but many agencies fail to train for communications. More and more, it’s an expectation from the public that they are 

going to get information as soon as possible. They rely on social media and it’s 

our responsibility to communicate effectively during a crisis or a potential crisis,” 

says Capt. James Mallo of the Sheriff’s Office Juvenile Investigation Division, 

which includes the SRO program. “The rumors are what hurts us. We need to 

stop the rumors and tell them what’s really going on. We want to reach out to 

parents and students to set the story straight on even the most minor things.”

Mallo notes that for the most part, school bus accidents fall under that heading 

of “minor things,” but all it takes is one text from a child saying “We had an 

accident” to start a rumor that rapidly spreads and changes. Getting parents to 

turn to the School Safety Social Media sites when those rumors start to fly results 

from building a relationship with parents, students and staff to create a climate 

of communication and trust throughout the 87-school district. 
Cobbe says Pasco County Schools enroll approximately 70,000 students in those 

87 schools, and it’s hard to communicate effectively with the families of that 

many people. Putting all information related to school safety in one place should 

help; the response received from staff, students and parents following the August 24 launch has been positive. 

“The parents do seem to appreciate it,” Cobbe says. “The project shows how 

really important it is for law enforcement and school districts to communicate 

with each other, and to work together to provide parents with the most accurate 

information. I think it could be the first site of this kind in the nation, and I hope 

it’s something that other schools decide to replicate.” 

To see what the Pasco County sites look like, visit http://pascosheriff.com/

pascosheriffschoolsafety/; follow Twitter: @PSOSchool Safety; see Instagram: 

@instagram/pascosheriffSchool Safety.

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CH.13: PASCO COUNTY USES SOCIAL MEDIA AS “GO TO” RESOURCE • 53
CHAPTER 14

PROJECT SAFETY NET 

EMPHASIZES TEAM APPROACH

By Becky Lewis

August 2015

The high school’s in a lockdown, what does that mean?

I tried texting my kid, but there’s too much traffic. 

What’s going on?

The school’s been evacuated, where’s my daughter?

Whenever there’s a school emergency – anything from 

a broken water main to an active shooter – parents ask 

questions like these, and too often, no one knows the 

answers. But in California’s Corona-Norco Unified School District, an online educational video and a strong partnership between the school and the community 

ensure that in this district, those questions don’t go unanswered.

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CH.14: PROJECT SAFETY NET EMPHASIZES TEAM APPROACH • 55

“School Safety: Learn How You Can Help,” (available at http://news.cnusd.net/

school-safety-learn-how-you-can-help/) is just one component among many in 

Project Safety Net, the district’s award-winning school safety program (see sidebar, “Partnership, Best Practices Result in National Award”). Associate Superintendent of Instructional Support Michael Cobarrubias says that Corona-Norco, 

like many other school systems, took a hard look at safety issues following 

the December 2012 incident at Sandy Hook, and the district came up with an 

ongoing plan of improvements that range from monthly radio tests to online 

video and other resources to partnerships with the two local law enforcement 

agencies. 

“We continue to harden the target,” 

Cobarrubias says. “Rather than having 

to react to an event, we are trying to 

be proactive. We hope nothing happens, of course, but the more safety 

nets we have, the more we are able to 

protect our students and staff.”

Several of those “safety nets” can 

be found online, including “School 

Safety: Learn How You Can Help.” The 

video explains the difference between 

a lockdown and an evacuation, tells 

parents where to go for accurate 

information in the event of an emergency, suggests that parents form 

telephone/email/text chains to spread 

information and explains the need to bring identification to a reunification area. 

In addition to its Internet availability, school administrators have used it at PTA 

and other parent meetings. A second video, “Active Shooter Preparedness,” 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFC9EhU14wc), addresses non-law enforcement reaction to an active shooter event, and a booklet titled Project Safety Net 

(http://www.cnusd.k12.ca.us//flipbook/safetynet/#p=28) gives an overview of 

the entire program. 

Corona-Norco has made safety a priority, using a combination of budgetary 

funds, grants and money raised through school bond issues to fund the program 

for the district’s 50 schools, 54,000 students and 5,000 employees. Two years 

in, suspension rates have fallen five percent and expulsion rates have fallen 16 

percent. Student responses to the California Healthy Kids Survey indicate that 

students say they feel much safer on campus than they did before the program 

started.

Part of that feeling of improved safety comes from an increased police presence through the addition of SROs in the high schools and the Adopt-A-School 

program, whereby non-SRO officers frequently visit assigned schools to become 

a known, and welcome, presence. Lt. Neil Reynolds, who oversees the Special 

Enforcement Bureau for the Corona Police Department, characterizes his department’s partnership with the school district as “a great way to effectively and 

efficiently put resources in place to keep schools safe. Michael Cobarrubias has 
taken a very serious stance and is honestly concerned about school safety. He’s a 

pleasure to work with, and he’s really dedicated to making sure schools are safe. 

We have an open line of communication, and he and I speak frequently about 

what’s going on.” 

In addition to providing SROs, Corona PD works with the school district on pedestrian safety and other safety information to the schools, and runs a successful 

Youth Diversion Program that allows students who are detained or arrested for 

a non-violent misdemeanor offense to work out a contract with their teachers, 

parents and law enforcement. Successful contract completion results in dismissal 

of the charges, and Reynolds characterizes the program as “very successful.” In 

2013 and 2014 combined, approximately 125 students avoided probation and 

parole, and Reynolds says those cases include several amazing turnaround stories and “most of our contracted minors learn they can dig a little deeper within 

themselves, during the contract period at least, and, in the end, comment on 

having a sense of relief and accomplishment, to varying degrees.”

Lt. Scott Forbes of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department also uses superlatives when it comes to describing his agency’s participation in Project Safety 

Net: “We have a phenomenal relationship with both Michael Cobarrubias, who 

we work very closely on a daily basis, and with the district safety coordinator. 

There’s good collaboration all around. The SROs work with the principals at their 

schools, with their supervisor and with me. I interact with district administration, 

and the district also works with Corona PD and makes sure that everyone is 

working together to make this the safest environment possible.”

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Partnerships, Best Practices Result in National Award

The School Safety Advocacy Council 

honored Corona-Norco Unified 

School District and Project Safety 

Net with its 2015 Exemplary School 

Safety Initiative Award, recognizing 

the program for identifying and 

anticipating safety concerns, then 

systematically addressing each 

concern through the application of 

best practices and the development 

of innovative partnerships with the 

Corona Police Department, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, 

students, parents and community 

organizations. 

Project Safety Net, implemented in 

summer 2013, includes the following components:

• Physical renovations and innovations such as adding peepholes, 

installing AEDs, implementing 

the use of ID badges and radios, 

upgrading security cameras and 

adding fencing as needed to limit 

access.

• The hiring of non-sworn campus 

security officers to supplement 

the school resource officers 

supplied by the Corona Police 

Department and the Riverside 

County Sheriff’s Office.

• The Adopt-a-School program, 

wherein uniformed officers are 

assigned schools to visit on a 

regular basis, becoming a familiar 

presence on campus.

• Interquest Detection Canines, 

a contract service that provides 

non-aggressive contraband 

detection. 

• Suicide Prevention Hotline and 

Program.

• The California Gang Reduction, 

Intervention and Prevention (CalGRIP) Program, which includes 

training for all middle school 

students and an evidence-based 

program that reaches out to 

at-risk youth. The district was 

one of 20 in the state selected to 

receive a grant to participate in 

this program. 

• W.A.T.C.H. Dogs, a program that 

encourages fathers/grandfathers/

uncles to volunteer in schools at 

least one day a year. 

• Annual active shooter simulation 

training in one of the district’s 

high schools.

• Creation of an active shooter 

informational video, a “what 

should parents do in an emergency” video and a safety information pamphlet. 

• Walk-to-School program in the 

city of Eastvale, where the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department 

encourages youth to walk, bike 

or ride scooters to school, and 

provides added traffic patrol and 

control along preferred routes.

The Exemplary School Safety Initiative Award honors districts that have 

implemented programs that have 

had a significant impact in school 

safety and the community. 

CH.14: PROJECT SAFETY NET EMPHASIZES TEAM APPROACH • 57
Part of that safe environment includes safe transportation routes, and Riverside 

SD provides a traffic team that concentrates on enforcement near schools at the 

beginning and end of the school days, as well as working the Walk-to-School 

program in Eastvale. Forbes says that in addition to promoting a healthier lifestyle, that program reduces the number of vehicles on the road and thus makes 

the streets even safer. The department also coordinates an annual active shooter 

drill in one of the district’s high schools, using some of its Explorer cadets to 

assist with role play. 

“Trends, such as drug trends or social media trends, are constantly changing. 

The district and the city and law enforcement all do a good job of communicating so that everybody is on the same page. That makes for a really good team 

approach,” Forbes says.

And in the end, Cobarrubias says, that team approach is what lies at the core of 

Project Safety Net, and plays a key role in its winning the award and in its overall 

success. 

For more information on Project Safety Net, contact Michael Cobarrubias at 

mcobarrubias@cnusd.k12.ca.us.

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CH.14: PROJECT SAFETY NET EMPHASIZES TEAM APPROACH • 59
CHAPTER 15

STUDENTS LEAD THE WAY IN 

FIGHT AGAINST BULLYING

By Becky Lewis

June 2015

Come October, a special dance is being planned for 

Lakeside Junior-Senior High.

It’s not a Homecoming Dance. It’s not a Halloween 

event. It’s not a Harvest Festival.

It’s a Bullying Prevention Dance as part of National 

Bullying Prevention Month observances, and it’s just 

one piece of a student-driven anti-bullying campaign 

that has helped lead to a 30-percent reduction in bullying 

and harassment at the Plummer, Idaho school.

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CH.15: STUDENTS LEAD THE WAY IN FIGHT AGAINST BULLYING • 61

“With an issue that is so personal like bullying, it has to be solved by the people 

that it affects the most, and that’s the students. We can talk around it all day as 

adults, but it’s when you see students get involved that you see positive change,” 

says Judi Sharrett, superintendent of the 400-student Plummer-Worley School 

District, which consists of Lakeside Elementary in addition to the junior-senior 

high. “Ever since I was a principal, I have thought that students learning the conflict resolution skills they need to deal with this themselves was important.”

Plummer-Worley had anti-bullying 

policies and procedures in place a 

year before a state mandate went into 

effect, implementing that procedural 

change when Sharrett became superintendent in 2009. The student-driven 

efforts started in September 2014 

when some 40 students from various 

grade levels at both the Lakeside 

public schools and the Coeur D’Alene 

Tribal School in nearby DeSmet attended a student leadership forum on 

bullying and harassment. Coordinated 

by Oregon Health Equity Alliance, a 

non-profit coalition that addresses 

health inequality through education, 

advocacy and policy change, that first 

forum led to students’ meeting with an Equity Alliance representative several 

other times during the school year. The group came up with a formal plan and 

presentation that they gave before the school board and the community, which 

included the upcoming dance, already-successful tip boxes located in all four 

school buildings, anti-bullying posters and generally watching out for each other.

“Since the student involvement has been initiated, I think the students are policing themselves a lot more, and we’re getting fewer complaints for the counselors to look into,” Sharrett says. Reported bullying and harassment incidents 

fell from 20 in 2013-2014 to 14 during 2014-2015, a 30-percent reduction. 

Although the numbers may sound low, she is quick to say that small school 

districts face the same bullying issues as do larger ones, including cyberbullying, 

which “sneaks up on our students just like it does everywhere else. It can be very 

covert for a long time and is probably the most hurtful thing that kids are going 

through right now. We try to make it non-threatening to report and we look into 

the issues, and it is hard to separate issues at school from issues on Facebook.” 

Plummer-Worley has used a grant to have consultants and behavioral support 

organizations work on creating a more positive school climate for students and 

staff, and also has had community forums and discussions to promote involvement, both before and during the student-driven initiative. The Coeur D’Alene 

Tribe Social Services Department has been a strong partner in that community effort from the beginning, and Bernie LaSarte of the tribe’s Stop Violence 

Against Indian Women Program has also seen a significant reduction in bullying 

reports. 
“I would get calls from parents whose kids were being bullied in school, and I 

would go to the school to advocate for the students. That’s how I came to realize 

they were having issues at the school too,” LaSarte says. She and other representatives from the tribe worked closely with Plummer-Worley administration in 

the development of the school’s anti-bullying policy and its subsequent adoption by tribal services. 

“My program has been going into the schools and teaching awareness for years, 

but having the whole community become involved was another thing altogether,” she adds.

“We’ve expanded the limited resources of a small school district by building 

partnerships. Equity Alliance works with the students on surfacing their issues 

and relating to them honestly, and we’ve worked very proactively with the Coeur 

D’Alene tribe to solve problems together. Many tribal members perceive this as 

a serious issue,” says Sharrett. Plummer, a town of slightly more than 1,000 residents that includes the public school district, is located on the reservation, and 

the 16 departments of the tribal government, including the 14-member Coeur 

D’Alene Tribal Police Department, are also located in Plummer. (The town itself 

also has a two-person police department as part of the city government.) 

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CH.15: STUDENTS LEAD THE WAY IN FIGHT AGAINST BULLYING • 63

LaSarte says that many of those 16 

departments have become involved 

in that effort, and for several years 

during the initial phases of the project, 

the Stop Violence Against Indian 

Women project sponsored poster 

and essay contests and conducted 

regular anti-bullying education efforts 

in the schools prior to the task force’s 

moving into the student-led phase of 

the effort.

“It’s really exciting to see the kids 

interested in solving the issues 

themselves. The key is student 

engagement, and also community 

engagement. In a small community, 

there is a lot of power in consistency 

among community agencies,” Sharrett says. 

The student-driven initiative started during the 2014-2015 year with a focus on 

students in grades 6 through 12, who received classroom lessons on how to 

deal with a bully, whether they are being bullied themselves or they see bullying 

between other people. Those lessons have included strategies such as walking 

away, increasing your self-confidence and not permitting the bully to get the 

upper hand, and most importantly, reporting the situation to a trusted adult. 

Next year, those students will begin mentoring the younger ones, passing those 

lessons on.

“A lot of things are coming together to help create a better environment so that 

kids aren’t being bullied, or if they are bullied, they know what to do. And what 

better way to make those changes than having the older students share their 

skills with the younger ones?” Sharrett says.

LaSarte adds that the effort has been quite an undertaking for the small community, but the working relationship has been strong and she has seen positive 

change since Sharrett became superintendent: “I used to get a lot of calls from 

parents, and some of it was really wicked and violent stuff. In this past school 

year, I got only one call, which I hope means we’re on the right track. You hear 

about the increase in violence in schools, and it has to stem from someplace. If 

it stems from bullying, which is my belief, then let’s try to get it stopped before it 

gets to the violence level.” 

For more information on how Plummer-Worley school district and the Lakeside 

schools have used student involvement to expand the resources of small school 

district in combatting bullying, contact Superintendent Judi Sharrett at Sharrett.

Judi@lakesidesch.org.
CHAPTER 16

CAMPUS, COMMUNITY 

PARTNERSHIPS STRENGTHEN 

EMERGENCY RESPONSE

By Becky Lewis

June 2015

They say little things mean a lot. Little things like a cup 

of coffee and a sandwich at 3 in the morning after a 

traumatic event. A snack brought to you by someone 

who was snug in bed an hour before, yet responded to 

a need with “I’ll be right there.”

David Perry, chief of the 67-officer campus police 

department at Florida State University and 2014-2015 

president of the International Association of Campus 

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CH.16: CAMPUS, COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS STRENGTHEN EMERGENCY RESPONSE • 65

Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA), knows about the little things that 

strong community partnerships can do after a tragedy from firsthand experience. 

On Nov. 19, 2014, former FSU student Myron May shot and wounded three 

students studying at the Strozier Library before being killed by police, and Perry, 

an advocate of building partnerships that strengthen the resources available to 

law enforcement in a crisis situation, recalls what happened when he called food 

services vendor Aramark.

“It may sound like a small thing, 

but to be able to call at 1 in the 

morning and say ‘we just had a 

tragic incident and can you provide drinks and snacks for the 

students still at the library’ and 

get an immediate response, 

that was huge. You can’t put a 

dollar amount on it or even adequately describe what it means 

to have snacks at the library and 

in our offices at 3 in the morning, and know that someone 

made that effort for you,” Perry 

says. “It really underlines what 

can happen when you keep the 

lines of communication open 

throughout the campus and the 

community. The outpouring of support in general was so immediate it caught us 

off-guard. It really doesn’t hit you how much the community does support you 

until tragedy strikes.”

Since becoming FSU chief in 2005, Perry has worked on developing those 

strong campus and community partnerships, and his keynote address at the Mid 

America Regional IACLEA Conference in Chicago in April 2015 focused on the 

valuable role these partnerships played in the aftermath of the 2014 shooting. 

“We created these partnerships through informal, impromptu meetings, by saying ‘Hey let’s get coffee, let’s get lunch.’ We make sure that the lines of communication are open all the time instead of just calling when we need something. 

Then, because you have this partnership in place, you have a resource when you 

need it,” he says.

Other resources called on after the FSU incident include the facilities and 

grounds crew, which performed cleanup, and the counseling center, which 

alerted Perry to a need to ensure privacy from the media for students seeking 

services. Because FSU had this strong web of partnerships in place, the university was able to proceed with recovery quickly and with a minimum of red tape, 

Perry says.
“It all starts over coffee and a doughnut. Coffee and a doughnut garner a lot 

of support down the road, and it’s good to know who your supporters are and 

where your assistance will come from long before tragedy strikes your campus 

and your community,” says Perry, who counts on relationships with community 

partners such as the Tallahassee police, the Leon County sheriff’s office, fire and 

rescue, and local offices of federal agencies to include the FBI and the Bureau of 

Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in addition to internal partners. 

Those internal partnerships include one with the library director that Perry 

credits for saving lives in November 2014: “The library director and I agreed to 

increase security in the library following a tragic sexual assault six years ago. We 

incorporated a swipe card system like you might see in a subway at a significant cost, and because we made that change, the shooter couldn’t get into the 

main body of the library, which is a very open space. Had he been able to get in 

there, the outcome could have been even more tragic.” 

Yet another internal partnership between the campus police, IT and emergency management resulted in the creation of FSU’s version of the well-known 

Staples’ “Easy Button,” a yellow box where a single button pulls together 15 

emergency warning systems (text messages, emails, sirens, etc.) under one 

access command. These systems can be triggered in the event of tornadoes, 

severe thunderstorms, flash floods, severe lightning, a HazMat situation or a law 

enforcement-designated emergency situation.

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Perry calls the FSU active threat training program and the way his officers 

responded another piece of the 

success story, noting that his officers 

responded exactly as they had been 

trained. FSU provides its own in-house 

active threat training, and a number of 

other institutions of higher education, 

including the University of Chicago, 

Florida A&M University and Savannah 

State University, have asked FSU to 

train their officers.

“I think it’s also important to note that 

it’s not until a crisis occurs that you get 

to evaluate leadership. Our president, 

Ken Fuchs, had only been here 10 

days at the time of the incident, and 

to be pressed into the national and international spotlight and respond the way 

he did is great,” Perry says. “You can’t ever put too high a price on leadership.”

For more information about bringing FSU’s active threat training to another 

campus, or to arrange for Perry to speak about the importance of community 

and campus partnerships in dealing with an active threat situation, contact him 

at dlperry@fsu.edu.

CH.16: CAMPUS, COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS STRENGTHEN EMERGENCY RESPONSE • 67
CHAPTER 17

MISSOURI INTEGRATES 

EMERGENCY OPERATIONS 

INTO “1PLAN”

By Becky Lewis

April 2016

Missouri is well known as the “Show Me” State, but 

when it comes to helping schools create emergency 

operations plans (EOPs), it’s Missouri that has 

something to show to other states: Missouri 1Plan, 

an online tool that integrates incident planning, 

mapping and training. 

Missouri 1Plan (demo at http://www.moces.org/

MO_1Plan_Overview/OPEN_ME_IN_BROWSER.html; 

one-pager at http://www.moces.org/files/mo1plan/

one_page_MO.pdf) offers online assistance with assessments, training, site 

mapping and emergency plans, plus a status board and a mobile app. The state 

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CH.17: MISSOURI INTEGRATES EMERGENCY OPERATIONS INTO “1PLAN” • 69

worked with a vendor and used U.S. Department of Homeland Security funding 

to produce the tool, which is offered free to all schools and districts in the state. 

Since its introduction in January 2015, Missouri 1Plan has grown from 170 initial 

users to more than 1,500. 

John Warner, emergency planning coordinator at the Missouri Center for Education Safety (MOCES), says when he participated in the National Institute of 

Justice (NIJ) Comprehensive School Safety Initiative Topical Working Group on 

State School Safety Issues in February 2016, he realized that a number of other 

states wanted a similar system, and Missouri is willing to share its experience establishing the system with other states interested in developing their own tools. 

“Every K-12 school in Missouri has 

access to the secure portal,” says 

Warner, a school resource officer for 

more than 20 years with the Columbia 

Police Department. “It allows districts 

that have struggled with how to write 

an EOP to not only produce one, 

but to also keep it updated. If your 

plan is on paper, when you make a 

change, you have to send a copy of 

the change around to everyone. With 

the portal, it automatically sends out 

an announcement that a change has 

been made, and administrators get 

notices that let them know who has 

read it.” 

“You can give law enforcement, fire, EMS and 911 access to look at the plan and 

see how it relates to their own plans, allowing for community involvement. And 

Missouri 1Plan lets schools put in their emergency contacts, which teachers and 

administrators can then pull up using the mobile app,” he adds.

Warner says that even without Missouri 1Plan, larger school districts may already 

have a strong EOP in place because they’ve been able to afford to hire consultants, but small districts tend to struggle: “We heard this over and over again 

at the NIJ meeting. Small districts don’t have the manpower and all of the work 

falls on one person, be it the superintendent, the principal or maybe the football 

coach. Giving our small districts access to Missouri 1Plan allows them to put a 

team together and they can learn as they go. I don’t want to say it’s the be-all 

and end-all, but it seems to work, and it works pretty well.” 

MOCES provides a “customer service” aspect as well, contacting technical support as needed to help schools resolve any issues they may encounter. Warner, 

however, says the Center has received very little negative feedback, with many 

districts saying how much better Missouri 1Plan is than what they were using 

before: “I know some of them had not touched their paper EOPs for five or six 

years, and this is pretty much like getting off a horse and getting on a rocket 

ship.”

In addition to positive feedback on the tool in general, schools specifically say 

that teachers continually ask for an emergency app, because they always have 
their devices with them whether they’re on the playground, in the cafeteria or 

on a field trip. Another plus with schools is the robustness and versatility of 

Missouri 1Plan, which includes elements as varied as radicalization and assessing 

the school climate to ensuring the school has access to enough shelter in place 

space in the event of a tornado, from determining whether a school needs more 

cameras to planning for active threat and other drills. 

MOCES staff spreads the word about all those features in various ways, with the 

most successful being regional workshops that provide lots of face time; Warner 

says after each of six scheduled workshops, there’s been an increase in Missouri 

1Plan use in that local area. 

In addition to being willing to share information about Missouri 1Plan with the 

rest of the country, MOCES also offers an open access, Cloud-based Resource 

Toolkit on its website (http://www.moces.org/files/toolkit/School%20Safety%20

Resource%20Toolkit%20v-8.23.2.pdf) that includes national resources for law 

enforcement, administrators, teachers, parents and students in areas such as 

bullying, public safety, sports injuries, school bus safety, active shooter situations, bomb threats and more: “We wanted school districts to have resource 

information at their fingertips so they don’t have to sort through search results. 

We wanted it to be a one-stop shop, and we tell our districts that if they think 

something is missing, let us know and we’ll research it and put it up there.”

For more information on Missouri 1Plan, contact John Warner at 573-445-9920 

x311, email warner@moces.org.

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CHAPTER 18

NYSSA CONNECTS SCHOOLS 

WITH AFFORDABLE EMERGENCY 

RESPONSE SYSTEM

By Becky Lewis

July 2015

The record-breaking cold that set in over the weekend 

sent the town’s residents shivering indoors. And it also 

started a crack in an aging, uninsulated pipe near the 

high school’s cafeteria. A crack that suddenly opened 

wide Monday morning, drenching lunch ingredients 

with water in a powerful blast that sent one worker 

running to call 911 and another to the computer in the 

manager’s office. A web-based computer connected to 

the school’s emergency response system, which quickly 

told the worker where to find the shut-off valve and 

stop the waterfall pouring into the kitchen.

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CH.18: NYSSA CONNECTS SCHOOLS WITH AFFORDABLE EMERGENCY RESPONSE SYSTEM • 73

Starting with a pilot project in one school in 2014, the New York State Sheriffs’ Association (NYSSA) has partnered with the state’s Boards of Cooperative 

Educational Services (BOCES) to make an emergency response system available 

to K-12 public schools in the state. NYSSA, the driving force behind the development of the project, provides coordination assistance for schools during the 

documentation phase and acts as a statewide liaison for the first responders, 

and the BOCES made the emergency response system an aidable program, 

which means qualifying schools can obtain financial assistance with the operating costs. 

NYSSA Deputy Executive Director 

Charles Gallo says when a school 

signs on, it receives a list of required 

information, which includes evacuation 

plans, building schematics, staffing, 

emergency response plans and more. 

NYSSA assists with coordinating input 

into the system, and makes site visits 

to take photographs and to hold planning meetings with local emergency 

responders: “We might take a photo 

of the interior of only one classroom if 

they look similar, but we take pictures 

out the windows to establish the line 

of sight. Every school is different and 

the information the schools store can 

be different. We talk about specific needs and how to develop information that 

will be needed when we hold the pre-plan tactical meeting, which includes not 

just the local sheriff’s office and school officials, but also local police, fire, EMS 

and state police.” 

When the documentation process ends, NYSSA provides further assistance with 

training and tabletop exercises to make sure everyone understands how to use 

the system, as well as the ins and outs of emergency staging. Schools can also 

use the system in various non-emergency situations, such as planning for a big 

football game or coordinating fire and other disaster drills. 

“It’s essentially an electronic storage cabinet for everything that schools previously kept in a three-ring binder. It includes information on the internal structure, 

such as the location of stored chemicals, lockboxes, fire suppression, and more, 

all of it digitized, stored in the Cloud and available in a automatically updated 

web-based format that can be accessed by all stakeholders,” Gallo says, adding 

that school administrators decide who has rights to make changes, such as 

inputting more photographs and adding or deleting personnel. The system also 

includes a smartphone app that can provide two-way communication and photograph transmission during an emergency, and a stored static version that can be 

accessed if Internet connectivity fails during a crisis. 
Deciding on the use of this all-hazards interactive crisis management system, 

which is SAFETY Act certified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 

came about as the end result of a two-year NYSSA search for a school safety 

project that could help meet the emergency planning needs of the state’s 

7,000-plus public schools. 

“Right now there are 140 schools involved in the project, across five BOCES. We 

are moving regionally, and our plan is to ensure that eventually every school district in the state, including those in New York City, has a coordinated emergency 

response plan in place,” Gallo says.

And in the process of ensuring those emergency response plans are in place, 

NYSSA is learning that many schools are inadequately prepared, as it takes 

them a long time to even locate the needed information: “If these schools were 

to have an event, they wouldn’t know where the information is themselves, let 

alone be able to get it to law enforcement. Once they’re part of the emergency 

response system, the information available will be consistent and first responders will learn that accessibility to relevant information for all schools is just a click 

or two away.” 

For more information on the project, visit http://www.preparedresponse.com/

New-York-Sheriffs-Rapid-Responder-Program.html or contact Deputy Executive 

Director Charles Gallo at cgallo@nysheriffs.org

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CHAPTER 19

VIRGINIA EVALUATES THREAT 

ASSESSMENT PROCESSES 

By Becky Lewis

June 2015

Virginia is unique in many ways: the Virginia General 

Assembly is the oldest continuous law-making body 

in the “New World,” independent cities and counties 

operate in the same way and it is the most populous 

state in the country without a major professional 

sports team.

It’s also the only state in the country that mandates that 

every school have a threat assessment team, and in the 

2013-2014 school year, the first after the authorizing 

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CH.19: VIRGINIA EVALUATES THREAT ASSESSMENT PROCESSES • 77

legislation passed, threat assessment teams received reports of 3,283 student 

threats, of which two thirds were classified as low risk, and 96 percent were 

subsequently resolved without any acts of violence. 

A report funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Threat Assessment in 

Virginia Schools: Technical Report of the Threat Assessment Survey for 2013-

2014, provides detailed information on the threat assessment teams’ impact. 

Data behind the research came from a school safety survey conducted annually 

via its website by the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety (VCSCS), 

part of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), with analysis 

conducted by a team led by Dr. Dewey Cornell from the Youth Violence Project 

of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. 

Donna Michaelis, Virginia Center for 

School and Campus Safety manager, 

explains that Virginia has required 

threat assessment teams at institutions of higher education since 2008 

(in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech 

shooting), and the state added the requirements for all public K-12 schools 

following the Sandy Hook incident in 

2012.

“Many schools in the state created 

threat assessment teams after Columbine, but they all had their own 

approach. This legislation mandated 

development of model policies and 

procedures, guidance documents and 

training materials, all of which can be found on our website,” Michaelis says. 

“And after the implementation, schools started calling us and saying ‘We have 

this case and we don’t know what to do about it,’ so we implemented an agreement with a threat management consultant who works with them.”

Schools can apply to the Center for some of the consultant’s time, and Michaelis says currently available assistance also includes train-the-trainer courses and 

materials. In the near future, the Center plans to release a customizable app that 

can serve as both an educational resource on the threat assessment process and 

a reporting tool. 

“We want to make sure schools and the community know how to recognize 

when someone needs help, who needs to know about it, and how the team 

should intervene and provide services. We’re trying to educate the community as well as school personnel about what threat assessment teams in schools 

do. In almost every incident (of serious targeted violence) that has occurred in 

U.S. schools, there was leakage, that is, somebody knew something about the 

person’s behavior or plans,” Michaelis says. “If someone is on a pathway to violence, concerned school personnel want to intervene and stop the progression.”
Threat assessment teams should include members with expertise in counseling, 

instruction, school administration and law enforcement, and may serve more 

than one school. Also, team members can work at different locations, provided 

they are available when needed to evaluate a potential threat. Through guidance provided by the Department of Education, the need for alternatives to zero 

tolerance policies is emphasized, and further, threat assessment facilitates active 

case management based on an individualized assessment of the case rather 

than a proscriptive “one-size-fits-all” approach. During the 2013-2014 school 

year, the vast majority of students identified as engaging in threatening behavior 

received disciplinary consequences and support services that permitted them to 

return to school. 

Michaelis notes that schools need to ensure that students, faculty, staff and 

parents know about their school’s threat assessment program. The Center’s 

annual school climate survey (http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/vcscs/documents/

StateTechnicalReport2014highschoolsurvey8-14-14.pdf) found that the majority 

of responding teachers did not know whether their school had formal threat 

assessment guidelines, let alone what those guidelines stated. Schools must 

assess expressed or communicated threats, and the model policies and 

procedures (http://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/vcscs/documents/ThreatAssessment

PoliciesProceduresGuidelines-Final.pdf) offered by the Center also encourage 

identifying and assessing a broad range of social, emotional and academic 

behaviors of concern and addressing those as well. These policies and procedures are consistent with the process set forth in Threat Assessment in Schools: 

78 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH.19: VIRGINIA EVALUATES THREAT ASSESSMENT PROCESSES • 79

A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates, a 2002 publication of the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of 

Education; they also reflect other procedures used in some Virginia schools divisions, including the “Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines” developed 

by the Youth Violence Project. (Note that schools may use the model policies 

and procedures, but may use other procedures as well.)

Research Highlights

Threat Assessment in Virginia 

Schools: Technical Report of the 

Threat Assessment Survey for 

2013-2014, (pdf, 51 pages) can be 

downloaded from http://www.dcjs.

virginia.gov/vcscs/documents/

TechnicalReport2014Threat

AssessmentSurvey5-12-15.pdf

Some highlights follow:

• Of Virginia’s 2,000 schools, 

810 reported at least one case 

involving threatening statements 

or behavior. Those 810 schools 

reported a total of 3,283 cases, 

generating a prevalence rate of 

approximately four cases per 

school and 6.1 cases per 1,000 

students. This equates to only 

1.6 threats per school if all 2,000 

schools are considered.

• Threats were identified by faculty 

(51%), students (34%), administrators (11%), other school staff 

members (9%), parents (7%) and 

others (4%). (Percentages exceed 

100 because some threats were 

reported by more than one 

source).

• High schools had lower prevalence rates (4.3 per 1,000) than 

elementary (6.6) and middle (6.7) 

schools. The highest frequencies 

of threats were in grades 3-9.

• Most threats were made by boys 

(81%).

• There was a presence of prior 

discipline referrals in 60.7 percent 

of cases.

• School responses included notifying the student’s parents (88%), 

cautioning the student about the 

consequences of carrying out the 

threat (65%) and increasing monitoring of the student (53%). In 

approximately half (51%) of cases, the threat was resolved with 

the student giving an explanation 

or apology (having engaged in 

no known attempts to act on the 

threat that was communicated). 

• Various kinds of safety precautions were undertaken when the 

threat was deemed to be serious. 

These included consultation 

with the school resource officer 

or other school safety specialist 

(42%), notifying the intended 

target’s parents (35%), protecting 

and notifying intended targets 

(29%), developing a behavior 

intervention or safety plan (25%) 

and providing direct supervision 

of the students until removed 

from campus by law enforcement 

or a parent (21%).

(continued on pg. 80)
Research Highlights (continued)

• A guiding principle of threat 

assessment is that the most effective way to prevent violence is to 

address the problem or conflict 

that underlies the threat. Accordingly, students were referred for 

school-based counseling (33%), 

mental health assessment (20%), 

review of an existing Individualized Education Program (18%) or 

504 Plan (2%), special education 

evaluation (4%) or hospitalization 

(4%). Disciplinary procedures 

were followed in 80 percent of 

cases; 80 percent also returned 

to school. 

• In almost all cases (96%) there 

was no known attempt to carry 

out the threat. Although a positive finding, this does not clearly 

demonstrate that the threat 

assessment process prevented 

the threat because there was 

no control group (e.g. of threats 

made in schools without a threat 

assessment process) to allow 

comparison.

• There were 30 threats (2%) 

judged by schools to have been 

averted when a student attempted to carry them out. These cases 

primarily involved attempted 

battery, but there were two cases 

in which the student had possession of a firearm and 11 attempts 

to stab in which a student had 

possession of a knife or cutting 

weapon. There were 29 threats 

(2%) judged by the schools to 

have been carried out by the 

student. These cases primarily 

involved battery, with two 

stabbings.

This report is the product of collaboration among the Virginia Center 

for School and Campus Safety in 

the Department of Criminal Justice 

Services, the Virginia Department 

of Education and the Virginia Youth 

Violence Project at the Curry School 

of Education, University of Virginia. 

The survey was conducted by the 

Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services in January and February 2015. This project was supported 

by Grant #NIJ 2014-CK-BX-0004 

awarded by the National Institute of 

Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 

U.S. Department of Justice.

For more information about Virginia’s use of threat assessment teams, including 

links to model policies and procedures, training materials, reports, enacting 

legislation and other related information, visit the Virginia Center for School 

and Campus Safety website at www.dcjs.virginia.gov.

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CHAPTER 20

CONFERENCE PROVIDES 

LESSONS ON STOPPING 

BULLYING AT YOUNG AGE 

By Becky Lewis

April 2016

When is a playground push just childish behavior?

When is repeated hitting and biting of the same child 

bullying?

How do you know the difference? 

Amy Smith, principal of Memorial Education Center 

(MEC) and preschool coordinator for Kentucky’s Pulaski 

County Schools, faces questions like those every day. 

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With her recent attendance at the School Safety Advocacy Council’s National 

Bullying and Child Victimization Conference in February 2016, she learned she’s 

not alone in realizing that bullying can start at an extremely young age, and the 

sooner that there’s an intervention, the greater the chance that bullying won’t 

become a lifelong behavior.

“I see children as young as age 2 targeting a certain child, pushing him down, 

taking toys away, biting and hitting. The child is a specific target and becomes 

a victim. I hear three-year-olds using bad language and yelling,” Smith says. 

“People say ‘well, they’re just kids,’ but when they keep doing it continuously, 

that’s bullying and that’s a victim.”

MEC staff, including the school’s psychologist, meet monthly to talk about 

school climate and how to recognize 

victims through behaviors such as 

acting withdrawn, sad or aggressive, 

because sometimes the bullying may 

take place on the bus or at home, with 

the behavior surfacing at school. 

“As educators, we have the advantage 

of observing children’s interactions 

with their peers as well as observing 

their behavior around adults. Behavioral changes are typically noticed 

sooner in an academic setting and 

can be attributed to anger or even an 

attempt to be socially accepted, resulting in demonstrating behaviors of aggression, outbursts and even defiance,” 

she says. “In certain situations, students may resort to bullying to avoid becoming bullied themselves. If someone picks on them, they start picking on somebody else and demonstrating the same kind of behavior. That way, the attention 

is no longer on them as the victim.”

When staff members at MEC identify a problem, they work with children to 

provide guidance and support, helping to protect victims and reduce bullying. 

Since returning from the conference, Smith says she’s worked to refine programs 

and increase support: “Several sessions I attended at the conference discussed 

how and why we should help children keep from becoming bullies or being 

victimized. The main message learned was listen and take interest in the child as 

an individual.” 

Smith came away particularly impressed by keynote speaker Dr. Sameer Hinduja, director of the Cyber-Bullying Research Center at Florida Atlantic University, 

and with Chief Joseph Solomon and Sgt. Joseph Aiello of the Methuen (Mass.) 

Police Department, who gave a presentation on Police Response to Students 

with Spectrum Disorders: “The police officers talked about how to communicate with students with disabilities and autism, about how to use pictures. They 

focused on communicating, being patient and respecting each other’s space. 
I have an enrollment of approximately 260 students and 30 to 40 percent have 

IEPs [individualized education programs), so our program is definitely an at-risk 

program.”

The National Conference on Bullying and Child Victimization also referenced 

school programs that use the Positive Behavior Intervention System (PBIS) and 

Response to Intervention (RTI) models, both in use at MEC. Smith explains that 

the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) allows 

school districts to use scientific, research-based interventions as a way of identifying students with specific learning disabilities, generally through following the 

RTI process. RTI uses a three-tiered approach to identifying and assisting at-risk 

students, and PCIS incorporates a parallel three-tiered system of service delivery 

in which each tier represents an increasingly intense level of services. In practical 

terms, that means implementing approaches like the school’s “Be Safe Be Kind 

Be Helpful” campaign that includes posters, daily announcements and colorful 

bees appearing on t-shirts, the website, the Facebook page and pretty much 

everywhere throughout the school. 

“We have rules for the classroom, for the hallway, for the cafeteria, for the bus. 

During the first two weeks of school, we always teach expectations, routine and 

expected behaviors. However, that does not mean that we do not see behaviors that need to be corrected,” Smith says. “Yet just this morning, we had a kid 

punch another kid in the stomach. We’re talking about 4-year-olds. So it’s back 

to PBIS and reteaching expected behaviors and talking about how to replace 

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that behavior, so we can nip this kind 

of activity in the bud. The information 

I gained from attending the National Bullying and Child Victimization 

Conference has provided me with new 

ways to help children who are bullied 

or victimized, and to help those who 

do the bullying. I’ve learned new strategies for building self-confidence and 

creating positive reinforcement.”

The School Safety Advocacy Council 

provides trainings, performs safety 

assessments and hosts two major 

conferences every year, the National 

Conference on School Safety in the 

summer and the National Conference 

on Bullying and Child Victimization every February. To learn more, read “School 

Safety Advocacy Council Helps Schools Find Their Strengths,” (https://schoolsafetyinfo.org/advocacycouncil_update.html) elsewhere on SchoolSafetyInfo.

org. For more information on early intervention against bullying at the Memorial 

Education Center, contact Amy Smith at amy.smith@pulaski.kyschools.us. 
CHAPTER 21

SCHOOL EMERGENCY APP 

AN “EYE OPENER” FOR 

EMERGENCY DISPATCH

By Becky Lewis

August 2015

Every minute, every second, of every day, emergency 

dispatchers make decisions based on training and 

instinct. Unable to see what’s happening on the 

other end of the line, they must rely on audio cues to 

assign the right codes, to accurately direct emergency 

personnel in their response.

A new technology developed by a partnership headed 

by the City of Ammon, Idaho, could be the first ripple 

that becomes the wave changing all that.

86 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH.21: SCHOOL EMERGENCY APP AN “EYE OPENER” FOR EMERGENCY DISPATCH • 87

The School Emergency Screencast Application ties together a school’s existing 

camera system, the city’s fiber optic network, ultra high-speed bandwidth and 

gunshot sensor technology to provide a live feed to emergency dispatch in the 

event of an active shooter incident. Winner of first prize in the National Institute 

of Justice (NIJ) Ultra-High Speed (UHS) Application Challenge, the app garnered 

a $75,000 award that the city, Bonneville County and Bonneville Joint School 

District 93 will share, with a short-term goal of installing a fully functional system 

throughout test site Sand Creek Middle School and a long-term plan that just 

might see changes expand throughout the county’s 22 schools and beyond.

Greg Warner, Bonneville County 

Emergency Communications Center 

Director, said the county’s dispatch 

team found the concept fascinating, 

because for the first time they could 

see what was happening: “It’s a dramatic shift in their normal dispatching 

duties. They like the idea that they can 

see and express what they’re seeing in 

real time to law enforcement, fire and 

paramedics. Historically, law enforcement would respond to an active 

shooter situation blind, and now they 

could have a site assessment before 

they get on scene. We would certainly promote it here because we want to give 

first responders everything they need for the best possible outcome.”

Some of that prize money may go toward getting the dispatchers what they 

need for a successful outcome as well, as City of Ammon Technology Director 

Bruce Patterson says he expects the county and school district to use their portions of the funds to purchase equipment needed for full implementation and to 

develop standard operating procedures. The city, which loaned some equipment to the county and school district during the development phase, will use 

its funds as needed to support the other two entities in their efforts.

While Ammon provided help to the county and school district to help them 

become part of the project, the city also received assistance in becoming 

involved in the Challenge in the first place. Ammon belongs to U.S. Ignite 

(more at https://www.us-ignite.org/), an organization that promotes the use of 

high bandwidth resources to develop transformative and innovative advanced 

technology, and the organization brought the Challenge to Ammon’s attention 

because of the city’s existing fiber optic network.

Patterson says Ammon considered various options before deciding on the 

plan for the Challenge-winning app: “I knew the school district had these IP 

cameras and there were concerns about sharing the feed with the sheriff’s department and dispatch 24/7. We came up with the idea of creating an automated system that would send an alert if triggered by a gunshot report. The idea 

advanced from providing dispatch with a still photo of the shooter to ultimately 

giving them access to all of the school’s cameras, which is actually easier to 

implement.”
The city established a goal of using existing technology as much as possible, 

adding the automation of gunshot sensors to the existing high-speed network 

and camera system.

“The idea of a network capable of instantly building a connection and providing 

bandwidth based on an automated trigger could, in addition, serve any number 

of future applications. For example, a trigger based on facial recognition of a 

crowd of people fleeing down a hallway would be easy to implement using the 

foundation laid in this project,” Patterson says; such an application could prove 

life-saving in the event of an active threat using a knife or other silent weapon. 

“By making what we created extensible, it can serve many other purposes in 

the future.”

The Ammon team explained the concept well enough in its Phase I proposal 

that the city advanced to Phase II of the Challenge, which entailed actually developing and building the app. An immediate challenge arose with the gunshot 

sensor portion of the project: while sensors work well outdoors where sound 

travels in one direction, indoor sensing is another matter, particularly in a school 

filled with slamming locker doors and other loud, sharp background noises. The 

partnering sensor vendor persisted, using ongoing recording throughout the 

school year to continually refine and improve the product’s false-positive ratio to 

the point that Patterson says that most of the time, it’s accurate within three feet. 

The vendor achieved those results through several rounds of testing the sensors 

against shots fired inside the school from multiple handguns and rifles of differing calibers, he says, using the data collected to refine the sensors’ algorithm to 

filter out everything but gunfire.

88 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH.21: SCHOOL EMERGENCY APP AN “EYE OPENER” FOR EMERGENCY DISPATCH • 89

“We felt pretty confident going in that we could do it because the technological 

barriers were low, and the biggest barrier turned out to be people and policies. 

Nobody thought it was a bad idea, but there were concerns, although those 

faded when they saw the accuracy of the demo. Now the county and school 

district just need to develop policies that meet their comfort levels,” Patterson 

says. “And once there is investment on the part of the people using the system, 

they will think of how to improve or expand on it.”

While the policy and procedure development will primarily come from Warner 

and the Emergency Communications Center team, the school district and the 

Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office also have roles in the future of the project, as 

they have throughout the initial development stages. In addition, Capt. Samuel 

Hulse of the sheriff’s office, the primary liaison with the city, thinks the system 

could have future applications outside the school system.

“If you look at what’s happened nationally over the past 20 years, when an 

active shooter event happens, the information is always spotty. Law enforcement 

knows there is a problem, but it’s hard to give an accurate picture to responding 

units. I recognize this would be a valuable technology for schools, but it could 

also be deployed in other areas that draw large crowds, like football stadiums 

or movie theaters,” Hulse says. “It’s a good technology and it will be interesting 

to see what the next generation of sensors looks like, because the technology 

is close but it’s not ready to deploy on a mass scale. It’s good that the app has 

a person inserted into it early, because human eyes look at it from the dispatch 

center and can make a judgment about what they see.” 

John Pymm, director of Safety Operations and Facilities for the school district, 

shares Hulse’s enthusiasm for the project: “In my role as the director of safety, 

I of course pay very close attention to active shooter situations throughout the 

country, and the one thing that has become crystal clear is that response time 

means everything as far as saving lives. When Bruce approached the school 

district to be part of a project that could dramatically reduce response time, 

we were definitely in.”

During the development phase, the project installed 11 sensors in Sand Creek 

Middle School, but approximately one-third of the school still lacks coverage, 

and the district plans to use some of the Challenge money to finish placing 

sensors throughout the facility. Pymm says there has been talk of setting Sand 

Creek up as a full pilot site that would be open to visitors from outside the area, 

but those plans have not been discussed in depth.

“My hope is we can finish the school and move forward from there. As a school 

district, we very much appreciate the cooperation we’ve had with the City of 

Ammon and the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office, and we’re very proud to be a 

part of moving this technology forward,” Pymm says.

For more information about The School Emergency Screencast Application, contact Bruce Patterson at bpatterson@ci.ammon.id.us, phone (208) 612-4054. For 

more information on National Institute of Justice Challenges and other funding 

opportunities, visit http://nij.gov/funding/Pages/current.aspx
CHAPTER 22

YOUTH CRIME WATCH TURNS

STUDENTS INTO PEER 

EDUCATORS

By Becky Lewis

May 2016

Come up with a catchy acronym and matching shirts 

and jackets, and soon you have a club that everyone 

wants to join.

That was the strategy adopted by now-Lt. Raul Correa 

of the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department, back 

in the day 26 years ago when he served as school 

resource officer at Citrus Grove Middle School. He 

dubbed his school’s Youth Crime Watch club COP 

(Citrus on Patrol), the young members took ownership 

of the club’s efforts and soon everyone wanted to join.

90 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
The Youth Crime Watch program, part of the Citizens’ Crime Watch of 

Miami-Dade, is still going strong after more than 30 years in existence, serving 

nearly 30,000 students every school year with youth crime prevention presentations, safety projects, rallies, assemblies, special events and Youth Crime Watch 

club meetings. Youth crime Watch school coordinators conduct more than 

500 presentations per school year at various Miami-Dade County schools, and 

approximately 20 of those schools sponsor successful club programs like the 

one Correa helped mentor at Citrus Grove. 

“The members are not junior cops. 

They educate their peers about youth 

crime prevention through positive 

peer pressure and peer-to-peer education,” says Joel Mesa, education 

director and school coordinator for 

Citizens’ Crime Watch. Participation 

in the club program takes place at 

the individual school level, with the 

Youth Crime Watch program providing 

training and ongoing support. “We 

provide materials and resources, but 

the youth serve as the educators.”

Mesa says schools receive a lot of 

leeway in implementing the program 

and in selecting the topics on which 

they focus. (For two examples of the program’s flexibility, see sidebars “Crime 

Educators Help Others, and Themselves, Make Better Choices” and “Involving 

Even the Youngest in Educating Their Peers”.) Potential topics for presentations 

and club focus area include (but are not limited to) bullying prevention, social 

media concerns such as cyberbullying and sexting, stranger danger, violence 

prevention and gun safety awareness. Youth Crime Watch often partners with 

the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department and other local law enforcement 

agencies in developing and giving presentations. 

“We use Youth Crime Watch as, so to speak, a ‘jack of all trades,’ ” says Public Information Officer Correa. “Our officers are actively involved in gun safety 

presentations, in character presentations, in anything and everything we can do 

when it comes to youth safety. We work hand-in-hand with Joel, we help him 

out and he helps us out. Wherever there is a Youth Crime Watch Club, we are 

actively involved.”

Correa says that Youth Crime Watch was initially forged out of a partnership between the school system and local law enforcement, including the Miami-Dade 

Police Department as well as the 200-officer school police department. Mesa 

recalls that the umbrella Citizens’ Crime Watch program started with citizens 

concerned about a particular incident of violence more than 40 years ago, and 

that when that program became successful, the program launched the first Youth 

Crime Watch Club at North Miami Beach Junior High in 1979. The school board 

and the police departments came up with funding to continue its success and 

expand the program (although in recent years that funding has faced competition from other priorities).

CH. 22: YOUTH CRIME WATCH TURNS STUDENTS INTO PEER EDUCATORS • 91
Mesa says school crime statistics and survey assessments have continuously 

demonstrated that schools with YCW programs have lower crime rates and 

safer school environments, which in turn contribute to academic success. And 

in addition to academic success in school, the program also can generate life 

success, according to Correa: “We instill safety lessons and they remember them 

when they’re adults. Because of that, this is a program that the whole community should support.”

Although the program has strong support in the community and in the school 

system, Mesa says Youth Crime Watch does face two obstacles to implementing 

clubs: One is finding a teacher or administrator willing to act as a club adviser, 

the other is facing the misperception that having a club means there is crime in 

the school. However, although not all schools want to have clubs, many more do 

want presentations from Youth Crime Watch and from law enforcement. These 

schools often also participate in activities such as Blue Ribbon Week to celebrate 

a violence-free lifestyle, Stop the Violence walks and marches, the Youth Crime 

Watch poster and essay contest, and many others. 

Youth Crime Watch of Miami-Dade is a past recipient of the National Crime 

Prevention Program of the Year from the National Crime Prevention Council. 

For more information contact Joel Mesa at (305) 468-1302, email Joel@citizenscrimewatch.org, or to learn more about law enforcement involvement, contact 

Lt. Raul Correa at rcorrea@dadeschools.net.

92 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 22: YOUTH CRIME WATCH TURNS STUDENTS INTO PEER EDUCATORS • 93

Dr. Michael M. Krop High School: Crime Educators 

Help Others, and Themselves, Make Better Choices

“Preventing Crime In and Out of 

School Through Education and 

Volunteering.”

That’s the slogan which the students 

at Miami’s Dr. Michael M. Krop 

Senior High School originally came 

up with to describe their Crime 

Educators program, and it’s still the 

slogan for that school’s Youth Crime 

Watch chapter 15 years later. 

Kim Ferreira, co-chair of the school’s 

Special Education Department, says 

that from the beginning, Krop students wanted to emphasize the educational component of the program 

by referring to their group as Crime 

Educators, and Youth Crime Watch 

(YCW) of Miami-Dade supported the 

school’s efforts in that direction from 

the onset. As part of its emphasis 

on education, the Krop program 

sponsors numerous guest speakers 

throughout the year who present 

in a variety of venues ranging from 

multiple presentations to individual 

classrooms to assemblies in the auditorium for some 700 students.

“Some of our presentations are 

purely educational, but many of 

our speakers are just sharing their 

experiences. Students are so tired of 

being told over and over again by 

adults ‘don’t do drugs,’ ‘wear your 

seat belt,’ and so on, but when you 

have a former gang member who 

is now a pastor or even a Special 

Agent from Homeland Security who 

makes his presentation on human 

trafficking real by telling stories 

about high school and middle 

school kids they can relate to, it 

makes a difference,” Ferreira says.

Because Youth Crime Watch gives 

Ferreira and her students the 

freedom to choose the topics they 

want to address and how to address 

them, the school has been able to 

bring in speakers such as a woman 

who told about being valedictorian 

of her class and deciding on a military career, and “a week before she 

was supposed to leave, she went out 

drinking with her friends, and she 

got so trashed she doesn’t remember getting into her car. She doesn’t 

remember around 4 or 5 in the 

morning hitting someone who was 

selling newspapers and pinning that 

person’s body under her car. She 

does remember the time she spent 

in prison for vehicular manslaughter. 

That’s very different than someone 

just standing up and saying ‘Drinking and driving kills.’ ” 

Youth Crime Watch also supports 

the Krop Crime Educators in taking 

field trips to their feeder middle 

and elementary schools, where the 

high school students present to 

the younger children. Ferreira says 

both groups benefit from the shared 

activities and “it’s eye-opening for 

the older kids. They can’t believe 

the questions they get and what the 

younger children know and have 

been exposed to.”

(continued on pg. 94)
Dr. Michael M. Krop High School (cont.)

One of the students involved in 

these presentations as president of 

the Crime Educators group has gone 

on to graduate from college and 

become director of an aftercare program; he likes to occasionally return 

to Krop and act as an adult chaperone on field trips. Ferreira explains 

this young man was an elementary 

school bully – not just someone 

who called other children names 

but someone who got physical and 

forced younger children to give him 

money. It turns out, she says, that he 

in turn was being bullied by a physically abusive older brother, and he 

turned his life around in high school 

and won numerous awards for his 

part in Youth Crime Watch and the 

Crime Educators.

“When he went with us as a chaperone to his former elementary school, 

the teachers there were shocked because every single one of them told 

me he was the worst kid they had 

ever seen in all their years of teaching, and to me he’s just a gentle 

giant,” she says. “A lot of times as 

teachers, you think you have a bully 

and you have a victim, and you have 

to help the victim, but if you find out 

where the bully is coming from, it 

may be that he needs help too.”

In addition to sponsoring speakers 

and going into the field to give presentations, the Youth Crime Watch 

Crime Educators participate in the 

national Red Ribbon Week against 

alcohol and drug abuse with posters 

and simple lunchtime activities like 

musical chairs as a way of showing 

students they can have fun without 

drugs and alcohol. The program 

has also benefitted from extremely 

strong support from the Krop High 

administration. 

“The program has helped the 

students make better choices 

themselves, and it’s helped them 

recognize other students that need 

help. There have been students that 

I didn’t realize were involved with 

drugs and alcohol, either through 

their own activities or the activities 

of a family member,” Ferreira says. 

“I think being involved has helped 

many of these students not only 

in the short-term, but it has also 

helped them to take on leadership 

roles in their adult lives.”

To learn more about the Crime 

Educators program at Dr. Michael M. 

Krop High School, contact Kim Ferreira at kferreira@dadeschools.net

94 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4
CH. 22: YOUTH CRIME WATCH TURNS STUDENTS INTO PEER EDUCATORS • 95

Ojus Elementary: Involving Even the 

Youngest in Educating Their Peers

“Everyone” said it was impossible 

to involve kindergartners in a Youth 

Crime Watch chapter.

“Not age appropriate,” they said.

At Ojus Elementary in Miami, for the 

past four years, the kindergartners 

have proved “everyone” wrong.

Margie Love, faculty adviser to the 

Ojus Youth Crime Watch Program, 

includes one representative from 

each class, at every grade level, in 

the monthly club meetings. Each 

child then returns to his/her classroom the following day and explains 

the concepts addressed in the 

meeting and shares the information 

learned. 

“All of the children, kindergarten 

included, can speak on any safety 

topic and they’re all very involved,” 

Love says. “The entire school is kept 

apprised on all the issues and on 

how to keep themselves safe both in 

their school and in their community.”

Love says because many of the children remain in the club for multiple 

years, she tries to come up with new 

presentations and ideas so the experience remains fresh: “Since I have 

experience with running an adult 

Neighborhood Watch Program, my 

idea is to groom them so they grow 

up to be adults who are inspired to 

be leaders.”

The types of presentations and 

activities that Love uses to keep 

things fresh include field trips to 

local police departments in Aventura, Hallandale, North Miami Beach 

and Miami-Dade, and to a nearby 

U.S. Coast Guard station; in-school 

presentations from those agencies 

that include (but are not limited to) 

“Eddie Eagle on gun safety;” 

honoring local law enforcement officers during First Responder Appreciation Week in January; presentations 

from the local FBI Field Office; onsite fingerprinting for local children 

and visits from therapy dogs and a 

local ham radio club. 

Nearly 1,000 children participated 

in a Stop the Violence walk around 

school grounds during the program’s 

first year and members of the Youth 

Crime Watch participate in the 

annual North Miami Beach holiday 

parade to promote awareness of 

the program. The National Center 

for Missing and Exploited Children 

sent representatives from Texas to 

do a presentation held in memory 

of Adam Walsh, and another major 

event took place in April 2015, when 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, at Love’s 

invitation, came to the school as 

part of a presentation of a Medal of 

Honor to North Miami Beach Officer 

Lino Diaz, who had been shot and

(continued on pg. 96)
Ojus Elementary (cont.)

injured in the line of duty. The event 

included command staff from the 

Aventura, North Miami Beach and 

Miami-Dade police departments, 

and representatives of local government. (Other local police departments have also assisted the program, including Miami-Dade County 

Public Schools, Golden Beach, 

Sunny Isles Beach, Miami Gardens, 

North Miami, Bay Harbor Islands, Bal 

Harbour and Ft. Lauderdale.)

“Almost everything we do is 

in memory of the Sandy Hook 

first-graders killed in that massacre. 

We really studied what they did 

there that worked and have implemented strategies such as training 

our kindergartners to move right 

into the bathroom when we have 

a drill,” Love says. “We will never 

forget those children, and I hope 

that programs like this one catch on 

nationally so that we will never have 

another tragedy like that one.” 

Seeing something like Youth Crime 

Watch move to the national level is 

a hope and a dream for Love, who 

says she often tells her principal that 

“we can prepare these children so 

they’ll get the highest test scores, 

achieve the highest GPAs and go to 

the best colleges, and what good 

is any of that if they’re not safe? I 

think school systems across America 

should incorporate safety programs 

like ours into the curriculum and 

make it mandatory. Our world has 

changed and we have to change 

with it. We would be remiss if we 

didn’t prepare these children from 

the earliest age possible so that 

when they leave their homes they 

feel safe, confident and prepared.” 

“If you ask me what is the most 

important thing I’ve done in my life, 

this is it. I want this to be my legacy,” she adds.

For more information on the 

all-grades-involvement in Youth 

Crime Watch at Ojus Elementary, 

contact Margie Love at mmlove@

dadeschools.net

96 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 4

VOLUME 1: 

https://justnet.org/pdf/00-Sharing

Resources_508%20updated%20

with%20volume%201%200619.pdf

VOLUME 2: 

https://justnet.org/pdf/00-Sharing%20Ideas_

Vol2-JUSTNET%20508%200715.pdf

VOLUME 3: 

https://justnet.org/pdf/Sharing-Ideas-and-Resources

Vol3_web%2006112015.pdf