Oxford shooting brings into focus increased school safety measures on Treasure Coast since 2018 Parkland mass shooting

After the deadly school shooting this week in Michigan, Treasure Coast law enforcement and school officials said since the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting in Broward County, much has been done to improve safety and security at local schools and monitor potential threats.

A 15-year-old student is accused of killing four and injuring seven Tuesday at Oxford High School about 50 miles from Detroit, Michigan.

In Florida, the landscape shifted after 17 students and staff were killed in February 2018 at the high school in Parkland, about 80 miles south of Port St. Lucie, officials said.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement started in the 2018 legislative session. The commission was established to analyze information from the shooting in Parkland and other incidents and address system improvements.

More: School security, safety in St. Lucie County beefed up after Parkland massacre

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“Marjory Stoneman Douglas changed everything in law enforcement in the state of Florida,” said Brian Hester, St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy.

Hester said a variety of measures went in effect to increase school safety, including security requirements and the amount of law enforcement officials in schools. After the Parkland shooting his agency essentially doubled the amount of deputies in schools. Now there are 65 deputies in 51 schools in the county.

“We continue to lead the way, when it comes to training with our deputies in those schools, the way we work with our school district,” Hester said.

Stepped up training

School resource officers get more training than any other deputy in the agency in areas including active shooter situations, crisis incidents in schools and trauma informed care and ways to recognize “some behavior before bad things happen,” Hester said.

Investigations into allegations via social media are very thorough.

“We don't tolerate people playing jokes,” he said.

Hester noted earlier this year a post circulated over a weekend regarding a student making statements about shooting up “central high school.” Fort Pierce Central is a high school in St. Lucie County.

“We brought in our intel unit, we brought in our analyst immediately on the weekend, and we actually tracked that threat back to … (a town in another state) where there is a central high school,” he said.

Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said concerns over schools have occurred since the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 in Colorado. The shootings at Parkland just two counties away made it a “top priority.”

More: Martin County's notification system puts emergency alerts in the hands of every school employee

“We actually have a small school police department within the Sheriff's Office,” Snyder said.

Threats are not dismissed with an attitude of “those are kids.” He said there is a threat assessment group that works in schools but also in other areas.

“If we see a threat, that (threat assessment) group works 24/7,” he said. “We’ll go at 3 in the morning and knock on your door if your child is in his bedroom or her bedroom typing out threats.”

Snyder said in current times, students, teachers and parents are more likely to notify law enforcement of issues. He said investigators need cooperation from the community.

He said he did his own inspection of a couple of schools and found security was pretty good, with single points of entry and fences.

“We don't want our children to feel like they're in an armed camp, but nonetheless, they have to be safe,” he said.

Snyder’s agency has publicized a number of arrests and incidents related to issues at schools in recent years, including one this year at Jensen Beach High School.

Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers said he thought that as a state the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Commission “came down with a much better plan than most other states have in place.”

Deputies at schools basically doubled.

“I can tell you that the schools are busy, they're busier than we probably thought they were going to be,” Flowers said.

Flower noted the statewide alert system, known as FortifyFL where people can submit tips via an app or website available on school computers.

“We regularly get tips that come through,” he said. “One out of every 10, or one out of every 15 you say, ‘this is the real deal. This is some kid that's made a threat on social media,’ and our team rolls into action instantaneously.”

Flowers said the goal is “to quell that entire situation” before the next school cycle.

“If it's a nighttime call about a threat with a gun, we want to have people on campus the next day … We're going to make a huge presence,” he said. “We're going to try and calm the parents and let them know … we've got this under control.”

When school is out of session, they work on active shooter drills at schools, noting a full scale exercise last year at Storm Grove Middle School in Vero Beach.

“We put our people under stress, we had real radio traffic, we had it set like exactly like it was happening,” he said.

Schools conduct regular drills

In schools, active-assailant drills are conducted once a month under state law, said Frank Frangella, director of safety and security for the Martin County School District.

Jensen Beach threat: Threat made against Jensen Beach students prompts investigations, added security measures

When incidents such as a school shooting happen in other parts of the country, the district and the Sheriff’s Office analyze what led to the attack to see if local emergency procedures could be improved.

The Martin school district implemented a CrisisAlert system in early 2021, which allows every staff member to immediately call for help in a medical emergency or crisis situation. If an employee issues an emergency alert through the system, the Sheriff’s Office is automatically notified, red strobe lights are triggered throughout campus, all campus computer screens are shut down and the school public address system voices the alert.

Active shooter and active assailant drills are held monthly in Indian River County public schools, as often as fire drills, as required by the state’s Office of Safe Schools, said Jon Teske, director of security and emergency operations for the Indian River County School District.

Active shooter drills are scenario-based and are conducted differently, depending on the school and age group of students, Teske said. Unlike fire drills, which follow the same procedures every month, active shooter drill procedures change constantly, with added variables to ensure students keep alert and not get complacent, he said.

“(The drills) can look differently because we’re going to do one in the library, then (the next month) we’re going to do one at PE, then we’re going to do one in the car loop,” Teske said. “We want to make sure the students still have a heightened awareness.”

Students need to be prepared for different situations, such as a person breaching a barricade or jumping a security fence to access the campus, Teske said.

The St. Lucie County School District works closely with local law enforcement agencies such as Port St. Lucie Police Department, Fort Pierce Police Department and the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office to establish and carry out active shooter trainings, according to school district spokesperson Lydia Martin.

“Currently what we're using is a protocol known as ‘run, hide, fight’ which is well known across the country,” Martin said “And that's what we continue to practice and drill on monthly.”

The school district, in partnership with law enforcement, conducts one active shooter drill per month at every school, as required by law.

The district continuously revisits its active shooter training policy with law enforcement, but as of now there is no indication of certain policy changes in the wake of the school shooting in Michigan, according to Martin.

TCPalm staff writers Olivia McKelvey, Lina Ruiz and Colleen Wixon and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Will Greenlee is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. Follow Will on Twitter @OffTheBeatTweet or reach him by phone at 772-692-8936. E-mail him at will.greenlee@tcpalm.com

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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Oxford High School shooting brings into focus school safety measures.