A buzz is heard on the loud speaker as an announcement follows: “Attention, we will be going into a soft lockdown.” Those words echoed over the PA system on Oct. 9.

 And again on Oct. 15. 

There’s not much a student can do but wait it out, but what do lockdowns mean for our teachers, administrators and SROs? 

Our very own school resource officer, Officer Phil Taylor, gives some insight on what goes into lockdown and how to best keep our students safe. 

“A safe day for me, how it defines, is that everybody makes it to school and makes it back home safely,” he said. 

Officer Taylor does not work alone, he works closely with our counselors to help promote safety.

 “I only have [one] set of eyes,” he said. “A lot of the times when I went to schools, the first place I would go would be to administration. The counselors get a feel of how our kids are feeling, because that’s something [the students] can use to talk to.” 

Superintendent Mr. Tim Walker, speaks on just how important students are to the safety of our district.

“I would tell you that our best resources are our students,” he said. “Our students are telling us about things and letting us know about things that they see; there’s 4,200 [students] in the district and only a few administrators and several teachers and staff, but our students really can be helpful for us in terms of trying to see problems ahead of time and let us know.” 

While an amazing resource, counselors are not only a resource that students can talk to or report concerns to. Hoover guidance counselor Mrs. Amy Myers shares how students can report concerns they have. 

“When students have any kind of concern, they should go about reporting it whatever way they feel most comfortable,” she said. “That can be sharing that with an adult, with a coach, some kind of trusted school staff members, always like a great way to go. Emailing those people too or a counselor is fine, but the ‘See Something, Say Something’ tool is meant to be there for a variety of reasons. One, it’s [accessible] 24/7 that someone is always gonna get that tip and respond. And at school, you know, it’s like once the day’s over, we may or may not be checking emails from home. Two, it provides an anonymous way for students to do it if they’re very worried about being attached to a report or concern and I don’t know, sometimes I think students are scared and so that gives them an outlet that maybe they would report things more openly and freely than if they had to sit down and actually talk with the staff member.” 

Reporting is something Officer Taylor appreciates, but it must be done in a timely manner for it to be effective. 

“If you see something that’s in the school — and this is very important — if there’s something happening, don’t wait until you get home to say, in my fourth period class, this is what I saw,” he said. “No, those are the times that you need to [speak immediately], because the resources are [at school]. That’s when they need to go to their counselor, to the teacher, to an administrator, say, ‘Hey, listen, I’m not trying to snitch. I’m not trying to get anybody in trouble. But I’m concerned about this. This was said, I’m concerned.’ Or ‘I saw this on Snap’ or ‘I saw this on Instagram,’ where it may be, whatever app you’re on. Don’t wait until you get home because if we can handle it before it gets home, we may prevent something from happening.” 

Officer Taylor mentions an easy and simple way to help someone. 

“Taking time and talking to people, it’s a lost art. We do a lot of texting [rather] than talk sometimes,” he said. “You can’t tell my intonation, my voice, other than it’s lowercase or uppercase. You can guess at the rest of it but you don’t get that body language. You don’t get that the intonation to the voice and things like that.” 

When it comes to a soft lockdown, students carry on with their day as normal but what is going through an SRO’s head? Officer Taylor relays some insight on what he does to help keep students and staff safe.

“When it comes down to a soft lockdown, [SROs] are worried why that soft lockdown is happening,” he said. “So as a police officer, I worry about, first of all, making the school safe. Things that happen inside the school, I refer that to the [staff and administration]. I am worried about what’s happening outside, making sure it doesn’t come inside. Now, here, at the high school, there’s a lot more of things that are going on. People are leaving to go to different schools to learn things. People from other schools are trying to come here, early release and [open lunch]…things of that nature. Sometimes, it is difficult to juggle all of that.” 

Regarding the soft lockdowns last month, the Oct. 9 lockdown was dealing with a shooting that happened on Applegrove that did not affect our schools directly; however, although the incident was contained, with the proximity, a soft lockdown resulted. The Oct. 15 soft lockdown was the result of a threat that was made directly to Hoover High School.

Officer Taylor said he believed the call was made to the school and sent to school security. 

“I believe they said something to the point of, there’s a male coming to school that’s going to shoot up at school in 20 minutes,” he said. 

Administration and the SROs communicated and worked together to ensure student safety. 

“[We] make sure that both of them are on the same page,” Officer Taylor said. “This is what we got, what do we do from here? Let’s put our minds together and determine what we’re going to do.” 

A lot is running through an administrator’s head during a lockdown, but one of the things they’re responsible for is communication. Mr. Walker explains why communicating can be difficult during a lockdown situation.

“We try to communicate to parents as soon as we are able and as much as we’re able, but those things are not always as quickly as people would like or as much as they would like,” he said. “That’s the difficulty of it. We’re handling what’s going on in the building, in the crisis, that situation is our first priority and the safety of all of our students that are in the building. We’re simultaneously running communication from the district office, and trying to get communication out to parents as quickly as we can.”

The Oct. 9 soft lockdown poised a different challenge on administration and SROs as they had to communicate with law enforcement for the shooting that took place on Applegrove. Officer Taylor explains how he was informed of the shooting and how the call to lockdown was made. 

“It just so happens that I had my radio, I heard when they were talking about shots fired and as soon as I heard that, I immediately called and talked to Officer Ataya,” he said. “I told him, ‘You listen to your radio and put your school in soft lockdown. There was an active shooter going on in Applegrove. Yes, it’s two and a half, three blocks away from you but you need to do that.’ As I was talking to him, I believe, Mr. Walker had just walked into the room. So they immediately started the [lockdown] process instantaneously.” 

When one school is in lockdown in the district, it is standard protocol for all the other schools to lockdown as well. Officer Taylor explains how they handled the elementary school going into lockdown while the shooting on Applegrove was taking place. 

“I talked to Officer Kakoules,” he said. “They were in the process of morning arrival for the primary school. I said, ‘You gotta get your kids in.’ And then, at that point in time, we need to talk to Mr. Donaldson and Mr. Runner, explain to them what’s going on, so they don’t let kids leave.” 

The district office has initiated a Security and Safety Committee that meets to talk over student safety and how to better improve. Mr. Walker explains how they came about and what exactly they discuss.

 “This is a group that we have of initiated more recently,” he said. “[We have] Scott Campbell leading that, who’s our director of special projects. We do meet after [a lockdown] but we will also be meeting regularly as well, just to look at, again, we don’t always want to be reactive. We want to be proactive. And so we’re trying to figure out how do we do things better, how are we most prepared and those things. We’ll continue to develop that as that committee continues to move forward.” 

Hoover is forever grateful for the amazing work of our administration, staff and SROs have done to keep us safe. Officer Taylor shares just how upsetting it is that shootings and lockdowns have become a normal part of society.

 “You know, before April 20 of 1999, we didn’t really deal with any type of school shooting,” Taylor said. “Since then, I think two years ago we had 264 mass shootings. It’s gotten to the point now it almost doesn’t make the news anymore. I remember ‘99, it was like two weeks, that’s all you saw, even local news, they still talked about it because it was something that we had never experienced before. I think in your [generation’s] time, the Las Vegas shooting from the window, that was a big one that they went over quite a bit, but they’re getting less and less, even something that big. The [shooting] that happened this year in Wisconsin. You only saw that for like two days and they moved on. And it’s just becoming almost like, ‘Oh, it happened again.’ We’re shocked, but it doesn’t shock the conscience like it used to, which I think that’s a problem, because we’ve almost learned to live with it. That is not a good thing.”