Lockdowns and gun violence in schools have become more relevant in this day and age across the U.S.
According to an article on the Triton Sensors website, there were around 857,500 violent incidents at schools in the U.S. during the 2021-22 school year, and about 479,500 nonviolent incidents.
Schools in Missoula are no exception. Around 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 15, Sentinel High School went into lockdown after a student brought a gun to school.
According to a message from MCPS, the student had the gun in a classroom and was showing it to other students in their class. One of the students saw the gun and reported it to Sentinel’s school resource officer (SRO).
The school went into lockdown shortly after, and other schools around the area went into secure hold protocols, according to KPAX News. The SRO called 911, and the student with the gun was apprehended in the parking lot of Sentinel High School.
There was another student that was taken into custody after investigation, according to the Missoula Police report. The two students were sent to the Missoula Juvenile Detention center and charged with possession of a weapon in a school building, said Christian Cameron, Big Sky SRO.
The lockdown was lifted around 10 a.m. and the students resumed classes.
There is a protocol for searching a car on campus on school grounds that is different from that for a cop searching a car in Missoula, Cameron said. This is because the administration for a public school can search a car with any suspicion if it is on school grounds, according to Cameron. For the school resource officers (SROs), they have to have a search warrant to search a car on school campus, per Montana state law, Cameron said.
After the two boys got apprehended in the parking lot April 15, some Sentinel students thought that they shouldn’t have resumed classes after this incident. A Sentinel senior, Hayden Olson, was quoted by KPAX News as saying, “Something of this gravity happens, they casually expect us to go to the second period. This is ridiculous.”
Cameron thinks it was ok for the students to resume classes given the circumstances that no one was harmed and the gun wasn’t intended for a bad reason.
“That’s good to know that they weren’t planning on any sort of a mass shooting,” stated Cameron. He was the first to be notified at Big Sky. After he was notified, he contacted the principal of Big Sky, Jennifer Courtney. Officer Cameron says that Big Sky was not in threat of going into lockdown.
When asked if there have been similar incidents at Big Sky, Cameron said there hasn’t been a gun reported on school campus, but there have been other weapons brought to school.
Big Sky has a lockdown procedure that is called “I love you guys,” and it is also used at other MCPS schools. This procedure includes Hold, Secure, Lockdown, Evacuate, and Shelter, which is a protocol put out by K12 2021 Safety Scenario Protocol.
The last two scenarios are for more natural disasters, like fires and earthquakes. Hold and secure are for situations that happen outside of school that could possibly be a threat. Big Sky went into a “secure” scenario last year when an armed robbery occurred at Rosauers, which is a few blocks away from Big Sky.
Lockdown is when there is a threat in the building and students stay in their class with locked doors until the threat is over. This is what Sentinel High School experienced when they had the gun incident on April 15.
Even though Missoula, Montana, doesn’t have much violence, Officer Cameron wants to be safe, which is why practicing lockdown protocol and understanding the “I love you guys” safety scenarios is critical.
“Just with the amount of violence that we see, unfortunately, in today’s world, we have to account for making sure that everyone is safe,” Cameron said.
