Lockdown at Schools North of Green Lake
From the Times (partial):
Seattle police are investigating a shooting at a Seattle Parks and Recreation shops building at North 82th Street and Densmore Avenue North.
Police say Broadview-Thompson School, Bagley Elementary and Wilson Pacific are in shelter in place during the search for the shooter.
King County sheriff’s deputies have been sent to home of the alleged shooter’s boyfriend near Bitter Lake to check on his welfare, according to spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West.
I talked with district communications. If you are picking up a child at the school, please be patient and follow the lead of police officers. Community centers with after-school programs/care may also be closed because of this situation so be advised of that.
Update (4:20 pm)
Due to the City of Seattle’s closure of all community centers citywide, Seattle Public Schools is returning all students who were on buses bound for after-school programs to their schools of origin. In some cases, students were delivered to community centers before the closure announcement was made. In that case, the community centers are calling parents and asking them to pick up their students. Students returned to their school will remain at school with adult supervision until their parents can arrange for pick up.
Seattle police are investigating a shooting at a Seattle Parks and Recreation shops building at North 82th Street and Densmore Avenue North.
Police say Broadview-Thompson School, Bagley Elementary and Wilson Pacific are in shelter in place during the search for the shooter.
King County sheriff’s deputies have been sent to home of the alleged shooter’s boyfriend near Bitter Lake to check on his welfare, according to spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West.
I talked with district communications. If you are picking up a child at the school, please be patient and follow the lead of police officers. Community centers with after-school programs/care may also be closed because of this situation so be advised of that.
Update (4:20 pm)
Due to the City of Seattle’s closure of all community centers citywide, Seattle Public Schools is returning all students who were on buses bound for after-school programs to their schools of origin. In some cases, students were delivered to community centers before the closure announcement was made. In that case, the community centers are calling parents and asking them to pick up their students. Students returned to their school will remain at school with adult supervision until their parents can arrange for pick up.
Comments
Better safe than sorry in our parks and schools. But hey...glad your brother thinks Blanchet is AOK. Plenty of us wouldn't get in a car anywhere near a situation like this. You might remember the Cafe Racer shooter earlier this year on the North End who subsequently shot a random driver Downtown and then killed himself in West Seattle. But, hey, wouldn't want to inconvenience afterschool track and swimming and soccer.
And whether we need a new mayor has nothing to do with this.
Maybe society has gone completely mad, but apparently you have too.
Older and Wiser
The commenter thought shelter in places were a bunch of hooey and was proudly stating that his brother just took his kid to track practice.
And that this is all the mayor's fault.
It was a disturbing comment all around.
Older and Wiser
All this should have come from the Cafe Racer tragedy.
And if SPD on the scene say its safe to proceed through the area, is it, or is it not, safe to proceed? Can we trust our police, or not?
WSDWG
-North End Mom
Thanks NE Mom for that update.
MW: I concede the possibilities are endless with gun violence. But SPD chooses their words carefully and information is all we have to rely on. So, when the police are saying one thing, while the Mayor is doing something completely different, it makes me wonder. The Mayor's actions indicated something quite different than his own PD's "unlikely threat" assessment.
It's easy to say "do everything possible" to prevent further tragedy, but I recall not long ago when people were Saran Wrapping their trailers to prevent chemical attacks by terrorists, responding to a threat level rated by color, and of extremely dubious reliability. Not to understate the seriousness of gun violence, but analyzing and measuring risks and threats, and communicating that effectively to the public is preferable to all-or-nothing measures, which will eventually lead to "boy who cried wolf" apathy. WSDWG
Lucy
-Garfield Mom
being closed and students not being sent there did not come until
about 4 PM, but I don't recall precisely. The message from Bagley was quite clear that everything was fine by 2:50 and that the students had resumed their normal activities (though shelter in place means they were having normal activities at that time, too, just with modifications, like no outdoor recess and some other safety precautions). I think "lockdown" would mean lights out and quiet with no activity.
My bigger concern is hearing that the 911 call was around 1:55, but
Bagley's shelter in place reportedly started around 2:15. Since the shooting took place only a couple blocks from the school, the danger would have been in the time between the shooting and the start of shelter in place. And there would have been plenty of time for the shooter to get to the school. That's not necessarily meant as a criticism of the response; just the reality of the danger and that is disconcerting to
me. Bagley has had at least two shelter in place incidents this year.
However, I remain concerned about the mixed messages between SPD and the Mayor's Office, the departure from standard protocols that have worked well for years, and the increased vulnerability to kids caused by shuffling them out of buildings instead of locking down and sheltering in place.
And while I wish I could agree that they "got it right" yesterday, I can't when luck was the determining factor. Community centers could just as easily be secured by two SPD posted at opposite corners who could've easily nabbed the suspect had she approached one as many feared. It's all speculation, but so was yesterday's building closures.
Sorry to be a thorn in the side of those who believe all's well that ends well, but I can't relax and say "glad it's over" with the increasing likelihood that we are going to see this again.
"And while I wish I could agree that they "got it right" yesterday, I can't when luck was the determining factor. Community centers could just as easily be secured by two SPD posted at opposite corners who could've easily nabbed the suspect had she approached one as many feared. It's all speculation, but so was yesterday's building closures."
I disagree, and not even respectfully; this generalization is flat-out wrong. Two SPD are insufficient to secure all of the entrances into Green Lake/Evans Pool, as an example. Think about all of the doors in that building, and realize that there are at least two that you missed because the public never goes through them, but she quite likely had the key to.
Further, this takes SPD investigative assets out of an active role in apprehending a subject and places them squarely in a passive role.
They did a good job and the only reason they needed any luck was because they were ultimately trying to guard against someone in Parks, which is something they didn't know at the outset of the SIP and evacuations. That's a Parks problem, not an SPD or a SPS one.
--Fremont Dad.