Most Oak Park and River Forest residents, students, staff, and parents are undoubtedly aware of the details surrounding the response to a school shooting threat in February of this year. I have closely followed the Oak Park Police Department’s response and the interference placed on them. It is clear that school administrators tried to steer the police response in a particular manner and succeeded.
The police response to the February incident was confusing and a failure at its worst. Undoubtedly, the school superintendent had policies to obstruct the police response. While certain response levels were reported in previous stories in Wednesday Journal, many details put out by the school are gibberish. The school safety protocols are just rhetoric, whose purpose is to please some parents, citizens, and other board members and to ensure that OPRF minimizes student contact with police. It is one of the most inefficient policies and procedures ever.
In January, the Department of Justice (DOJ) came out with its final report on the police response to the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas. I have written extensively on this topic and openly criticized the Uvalde police for their response. Quite frankly, it was the worst police response to a school shooting in our nation’s history. In contrast to this tragedy, if you wanted to look at what would be considered the “gold standard” in police response to an actual shooting, look at the shooting at the Covenant School in Tennessee. In that instance, police responded and acted immediately, saving countless lives.
Let me explain why these details are so important.
While the OPRF incident did not involve an active shooter — the student did not have a gun — it was initially reported that there was a student with a gun on campus and an imminent threat of a school shooting. Oak Park police responded differently (the first time) than any other police agency, not following any of the response protocols that would generally be in place. Instead, they followed the school’s bizarre procedures that prevented police from setting foot on their campus. These procedures have been designed by those who fail to understand that the police department in any jurisdiction must lead the police school response, which includes training, tabletop exercises, and the actual response. They overlook the invaluable role of law enforcement in taking the lead in a potential school shooting event.
OPRF, like many other communities, listens to the anti-police rhetoric and supports the pipeline-to-prison activism in believing the police are not wanted on campus. Well, if you are a parent of a District 200 student, you should always want your police agency to be prepared and ready to respond and lead the response.
Oak Park police should have responded with their patrol officers, supervisors, and commanders immediately. They should have predesignated positions, both inside and outside the school. The first officers must team up and go into the school and either conduct a search or start their investigation, depending on what is stated in the initial call. The police should never treat a report of a school shooting or a student armed with a weapon as a possibility — it needs to be treated as accurate all the time. If you do not train and respond like that, students and staff will die when the situation unfolds in real time.
This did not happen at the OPRF incident in February. Allowing the school administrators to lead the police response, guide the police response, and write policies and procedures on how the police respond to their campus situations is ridiculous and frankly unsafe. I agree that the school runs administrative processes for day-to-day student activities, but when the police are needed in a school-violence incident, the police need to be in charge of the scene and respond the way they are trained.
This requires strong leadership from the chief of police and their staff. It requires the chief to communicate with the superintendent how they will respond. I can assure you that if there were a violent school act on the campus or, God forbid, a shooting, the superintendent and her staff would immediately refer all questions about the response to the police chief. Strong leadership for standardized and proper police procedures for responding to campus incidents is necessary.
To every student, parent, and staff member at OPRF, once you start allowing or accepting that the police will respond to school incidents in a “toned-down manner,” that is how they will react every time they come to the school. Think about this: do you want that?
Finally, OPRF has had four directors of Campus Safety in five years. When you see a turnover like this from professionals the school has recruited for their expertise, you know something is wrong. Allowing the security director to run safety operations at the high school will have severe flaws. The school board should think long and hard about their decisions; they will undoubtedly impact student and staff safety.
Tom Weitzel, a graduate of OPRF High School, retired from the Riverside Police Department in May 2021 after 37 years in law enforcement and 13 years as chief of police. His opinions are his own.
