by Jim Boyle
Editor
Capt. Bob Kluntz of the Elk River Police Department said a recent rash of school lockdowns has been a fluke and not the result in practice for local law enforcement and school officials.
“The reason it seems to be happening more frequently is we have just been having some odd incidences,” Kluntz said. “These odd incidences have just bled over into school property.”
The most notable lockdowns came in a span of a few days and followed a wild police chase with a fleeing motorist that wound through three cities before making its way through the Elk River High School parking lot, plus the search for a theft suspect who was possibly armed and a suicidal woman who was reportedly carrying a handgun near schools.
“The lockdowns are not meant to alarm students or parents,” Kluntz said. “Students and parents just need to understand any time we have an incident that’s close by one of the school buildings and we have any suspects we think could present a dangerous situation we’ll proceed cautiously.”
The biggest shift in thinking about school security came in the wake of the massacre on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School. That’s when schools across the country and locally began to rethink school security.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting led to further school security enhancements locally, namely the equipping of all school buildings with secure entrances and video surveillance of the them.
Judy Johnson, a prevention specialist for the Elk River Area School District, said it has been unusual to have so many lockdowns in a short period of time and all of the issues were resolved in a relatively short amount of time.
“We would rather be safe then sorry,” she said.
Schools with the help of law enforcement regularly train on lockdowns.
“Everything we do related to the schools is done in cooperation,” Kluntz said, noting they do drills together and after every drill and real life scenario there is a debriefing that occurs.
And when local schools get a request from local authorities to go into lockdown, they honor it.
“We know it’s serious enough that they’re concerned,” she said. “Safety is our No. 1 concern.”
Kluntz also said the bottom line is safety. “It’s not to alarm anyone or to freak anyone out,” he said.
Lockdowns can be a complete, including the locking of classroom doors.
“Security is not cheap,” Johnson said. “I always point out that eyes and ears are just as important.”
Schools can also be placed in a secure mode to make sure nobody gets into the school and students don’t go out. Staff is made aware of what’s going on in these instances, but teaching goes on and students are not made aware of anything at the moment.
Series of lockdowns
In the case of a suspect search on Oct. 22, Spectrum Charter School was advised to go into a lockdown. The search started after a report of a man and a woman trying to steal catalytic converters at Affordable 4 All Auto Sales on Highway 10 in Elk River. A witness believed the male suspect was armed.
As the search headed north toward the industrial park where there are several businesses and Spectrum is located, police gave the school and businesses advice.
Businesses were cautioned to keep an eye out. The school, with its lockdown procedures in place, was locked down, Kluntz said.
The suspect, Robert Howe, a 54-year-old Oak Grove man, was located at Gradient Technology in the industrial park and taken into custody without incident. He was later charged with damage to property and vehicle tampering, receiving stolen vehicle, driving after cancellation, and receiving stolen property.
People on social media and elsewhere have been posing questions to law enforcement, the schools and this newspaper to find out what information they can get.
In the case of manhunt for the suspected thief of catalytic converters, a gun was never located, but that doesn’t change the information police were dealing with at the time of the search that he was possibly carrying.
The initial report on Oct. 30 that put several schools on lockdown was that a suicidal woman with .357 handgun was believed to be within 900 meters of the School and Proctor intersection. She was later located at industrial park on the west end of town. The Ham Lake woman was detained and the danger to herself and others de-escalated and the school lockdowns were lifted.
“The unfortunate part is we have to make these decisions in a split second,” Kluntz said. “Time is of the essence when we make the decision. We don’t have time to Facebook or call every parent, and quite frankly we might not want to give out information because we don’t know what exactly what we’re dealing with at the time.”
And once they do know, it’s also impractical to get on Facebook and explain every single call.
“I know people love social media, and they want all this information. It’s just impractical.”
In the case of the fleeing motorist, Elk River High School and other nearby schools were locked down when the motorist burst into the high school parking lot after hopping a curve after making his way from Rogers and Otsego, where the elementary was put in a secure mode, staff was alerted and students were kept indoors until the situation was resolved.
That incident happened on Oct. 21 when Scott Gordon Hoglund, 37, of Monticello, fled in a Jeep when an attempt to stop him in Rogers was made. The driver reached high rates of speed clocked at more than 100 mph at times, refusing to pull over for squads that had engaged in the chase with lights and sirens. The defendant was charged with fleeing a peace officer on Oct. 23 in Hennepin County District Court.
During his chase, he blew through stop signs, red lights and the high school parking lot, causing the school to be put in lockdown mode. In addition to crashing in the high school parking lot and later in downtown Elk River, he also drove through yards, over sidewalks and near occupied construction zones.
As he entered the school lot, it was suggested by a school liaison officer to lockdown the high school.
“It was very sharp of one of our juvenile people to say let’s lock that school down, just in case this guy gets out of the car and flees,” Kluntz said. “I don’t know if our officers had the information at the time, but I know we heard later from Rogers that this person they were looking for, there is possibly a gun involved, too. We just want to keep any violence from creeping into a school building.”