Anonymous wrote:What is swatting?

calling the cops/swat team on someone, like saying someone who lives there has a bomb. Someone swatted MTG, I think.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going through classrooms. My kids room was cleared. They had hands up and a bunch of officers came through with big guns and checked closets and adjoining room

They may also have the kids walk to the bus with their hands up, which is going to be scary but is for everyone's safety.

How do these logistics work? How do you know someone on the bus doesn't have bad intent if you don't know who the kid is? That seems like a bad idea to put kids and a driver captive on a drive home.

When they did this at Einstein last year, they searched bags before escorting them out.

Anonymous wrote:What is swatting?

I’m a dispatcher. I had one a couple of weeks ago, it’s when someone calls in and makes a fake threat to get a huge police response. Mine pretended he had killed family members at his residence. It was a legitimate address and Police went. The poor homeowners had no idea what was going in.
They call from an untraceable number.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A piece of reassurance I offered my kid is that people who actually want to do harm, don’t generally advertise it—this is most likely designed to create fear and chaos, rather than a legitimate threat. This is someone taking advantage of the fear from earlier this week

Sadly, this is statistically untrue. In fact, the opposite is true. The vast majority of school shooters told someone of their intentions before they did it. This is why the one of the most important and proven school security safeguards is early threat identification and culture in which students have trusted adults to tell them if they heard something, anonymous tiplines, etc. That and keeping guns away from children are the best ways to actually PREVENT school shootings. https://www.everytown.org/issues/guns-in-schools/#what-are-the-solutions

I think the PP is right in that if someone is planning to harm a school full of kids, they’re not going to call the school or police and warn them. Yes, they may tell other kids or post stuff online or whatnot, but these called in threats are rarely anything.

Do they typically do a lockdown instead of shelter for call in threats? Or is this a bigger response than usual? Any existing threats that may have caused that?

Anonymous wrote:A piece of reassurance I offered my kid is that people who actually want to do harm, don’t generally advertise it—this is most likely designed to create fear and chaos, rather than a legitimate threat. This is someone taking advantage of the fear from earlier this week

Sadly, this is statistically untrue. In fact, the opposite is true. The vast majority of school shooters told someone of their intentions before they did it. This is why the one of the most important and proven school security safeguards is early threat identification and culture in which students have trusted adults to tell them if they heard something, anonymous tiplines, etc. That and keeping guns away from children are the best ways to actually PREVENT school shootings. https://www.everytown.org/issues/guns-in-schools/#what-are-the-solutions

What is swatting?

We are on shelter now.

According to the police radio, the principal is about to lift the lockdown and go into shelter. All students outside will be directed to the football field. Unclear about students inside the building.

Shelter in place—lockdown over. Police found no threat

Anonymous wrote:BCC teacher here, we haven’t been updated, still on a lockout and only hearing whatever rumors kids are being fed: bombs in basement, same kid from Mon, etc. Any chance any of you could let us know what’s the current status? If Police is still on the premises, etc.

Police twitter currently says they are clearing the school with K-9 units

Bcc teacher, Fox 5 is reporting officials believe it was likely a swatting hoax.

Thinking about you and your students over the last two hours. I hope you can go decompress somewhere.

Fox5 reporting it is a swatting situation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can hear a helicopter circling in downtown Bethesda.

Me again. Now hearing sirens.

I'm prepared to bet that following Monday's "weapon" in the school building (Principal chose to hide the fact that it was a gun and we heard it from the media), Mooney chose to go into lockdown over today's bomb threat so he wouldn't be hauled over the coals by BCC parents twice in the same week.

Which is stupid, because Monday's gun at school could have led to a mass shooting incident, so he should have locked down the school then.
But bomb threats at schools, historically and in this area, have always been bogus - and usually do not lead to lockdowns.

So it's a case of the Principal, yet again, possibly doing something stupid to compensate for doing something even stupider before. Which is par for the course for this Principal, unfortunately.

Oh come on. Mooney can't win. I have no opinion about him because while I get frustrated with almost everything at BCC these days. It appears he has zero control over anything. MCPS won't even let him compose any communication.

If he didn't lock the school down and it was real, I'm sure he couldn't live with himself. He's a good person. Is he effective? I'm not sure. I'm not sure MCPS allows any principals to be effective.

So glad I was able to communicate with my son and go pick him up.

I agree. The people here blaming Mooney clearly don't understand how bureaucracies work. I work in a much smaller organization than MCPS and despite having a leadership role, I cannot communicate to the public with legal and PR types reviewing every single word. There's no way a principal decides how to handle an incident involving weapons.

And to be honest nobody knows for sure who called in this bomb threat and whether it has any link to what happened earlier in the week. And we still don't have any hard facts about that either.