A de-briefing between Richmond RCMP and Richmond School District, in the wake of last month’s incident at McMath secondary, has concluded that communication was partly at fault.
Police met with school and district staff recently, a couple of weeks after the Steveston school went into a soft lockdown amid threats of a mass shooting.
Hundreds of families decided to keep their kids away from the school in the days immediately after the incident, despite assurances from the school district and police that it was perfectly safe to return.
In the aftermath, some McMath parents also questioned how the school district handled the incident, citing apparently “vague” information being given out.
And at Richmond city council’s community safety meeting last week, Richmond RCMP’s Insp. Eric Hall told councillors it was recognized that communication with the parents and the public could have been better.
“As the investigation progressed, and we got to the source of the threat, it didn’t appear as if there was a realistic chance of anything happening, based on the information we had at the time,” Hall told committee.
“We’ve gone through some de-briefing with the school and the school district and the biggest fault was the communication.
“We have to make sure that the RCMP and the school district are on the same page; the RCMP and the school district communications were going out independently.”
During the day of the incident, when the school was in a “hold and secure” situation — whereby students and teachers were barred from leaving their classrooms and no one, other than police, was allowed inside the school — Hall said it was “clear that with cellphones and social media, it was like 1,000 people looking over your shoulder at times, leading to confusion among parents and children.”
“We considered shutting down the Wi-fi; we really had no ability to control that,” he added.
Hall said the RCMP and the school district are coming up with recommendations for how to deal with the situation in the future.
School district spokesperson David Sadler would only say that discussions with the RCMP “went well.”
Asked if he considered communication to be at fault during the incident, as per the RCMP’s assertion, Sadler wouldn’t agree.
“It’s not that the communication went wrong, it was about how can it be done more efficiently and to have more open lines of communication from the get-go,” he said.
“What we discussed at the meeting was that it’s very important that we are all on the same page, in terms of the messaging that’s going out.”
More up-to-date lockdown information for parents is in the process of being loaded onto the school district’s new website, said Sadler.
The McMath incident ended peacefully when a youth was arrested the same day at the school. Two days later, a second youth was questioned by police after taking responsibility for the drama, which involved threats, via social media, targeting the school’s LGBTQ and Jewish communities.
According to police at the time, the youth in question was “cooperating with police but cannot be identified due to his age.”
