Belleville School Lockdowns: Superintendent Addresses Online ‘Rumors’

BELLEVILLE, NJ — Earlier this month, Belleville Middle School was placed in a lockdown as a precautionary measure when police entered the building and reportedly removed a BB gun from a student's backpack. Although the lockdown was lifted shortly afterwards – and all students were safe throughout the incident – it left many local parents with serious questions.

At Monday’s board of education meeting, Superintendent Richard Tomko attempted to address some of the “rumors” he said have been lingering on social media after the lockdown on Oct. 5. Read More: Lockdown Lifted At Middle School In Belleville; All Students Safe

Several people spoke about the lockdown during the public comment portion of the meeting. Watch the full video here.

Here’s what Tomko had to say at Monday’s school board meeting (watch the video below, cued to his comments):

“Since we do have a lot of parents in the room as well, a lot of parents watching at home, I do want to talk about something that occurred at the middle school last week. And something that's been very important moving forward with regard to the way our community has responded. And when we go through an action, like an active lockdown, what to expect, and what are some of the things that occur before, during after that, so wanted to kind of, you know, get some information out there to all of you, because I know most of you were very concerned, especially if you had children in the middle school and how this occurs.

“Unfortunately, in my career, which is about 26 years now, I've been involved in several active lockdowns in-building and outside of building and central office. And with every experience, you get together with the police department, with local Emergency Services, Office of Emergency Management, etc. And you just get better at it. One of the things that Belleville has that we pride ourselves on now is we have a director or safety services director, and our Threat Assessment individual (who's Mr. Sullivan). So we actually have an administrator that's dedicated just to assess threats here, which is something that the Department of Education piloted a few years ago, and I think we're one of the only districts that have someone dedicated to this. So we take Threat Assessment very, very seriously.

“I think when you're outside on the periphery, you don't realize some of the threats that do occur, whether they're real or not to your children. And unfortunately, as a parent of four myself – three still in public school system, one out of college – you want to know more. I understand that … these are your kids, right? You drop them off at school, you put them on the bus, you want to make sure they're safe. There's nothing more important to that. We could talk about test scores all you want. We could talk about books, we could talk about sports, there's absolutely nothing more important … we all know that here. We know how important that is … [we’re] very passionate about that. And we do everything we possibly can to stop and mitigate dangers in the building. So and I have to tell you, I think Belleville does an incredible job. And that's from our office, the Board of Education, down into the buildings all the way through the community. And I'm speaking of the chief deputy chief, Fire Department Chief, all of those services – you are living in a town where we put this first because there's nothing more important than what I just said to you.

“But you do deserve some answers. Okay, and I'm going to give those to you now and how this works, all right, and the first thing I will tell you is: you're not going to know everything. And you should be happy about that as parents, right, or community members, you're not going to know everything. Because we do have things that mitigate threats that we're not going to tell you about. Right? Because why would why would we do that? And again, that's something that if you did want to learn more about me, that's a one on one conversation with me, you contact my office, and you come to my office, and I can maybe give you a little bit more. But there are things in our classrooms ... there are things that we do on the outside, intelligence-wise.

“[You can] tell your kids two things. The first thing is this: if you see something, say something, right? If you see something, say something. We say it all the time, but nothing is more important than you saying it at home once in a while. You may think: what's the big deal? Well, it's a big deal. It's a very big deal. Because what you do to reinforce what we do at home is extremely important, right? Because no one should listen to you more than your kids ... you're the parent... okay, whether it's your own child, or niece/nephew ... this is very important.

“The second thing you can do is this – talk to your neighbors, go on your social media accounts that you're all on talking about all the things that happen here – go back from this meeting and put this out there: If you know your son or daughter has a pellet gun, or a water gun, or a fake pistol or a Nerf gun that's black or something that looks like a threat, do not bring it to a [school] building. There is no reason to have it here. No reason at all. Because something that looks real, whether you know it's fake or not, does not look fake to someone who's innocent in a classroom, who's charged with keeping your child safe.

“Every building has safety services, individuals, you can call them security guards if you'd like – we don't call them that. They're a part of the community, right? They’re Safety Services. They all have weapons. They're all there to take down a threat. You do not want your child to have a fake gun and be considered a threat. You do not want your child to be sitting next to someone with a fake gun who's considered a threat. It's very simple. And we are now charged with the task of holding parents accountable, all right? I mean, you're endangering the welfare of your child and others.

“I lived in a place where my son and my children have pellet guns or air guns – whatever want to call them, BB guns – when I was growing up, right? We do that, they hit tin cans or whatever it is, they know not to bring them anywhere. If your child has a knife because they work with you, they cut cardboard, whatever it is, they cannot bring that knife to school. That's a threat. If they have a box cutter, they cannot bring a box cutter, none of those things. So if you know your child has these things, and you want them to still have them, please make sure they know not to bring them to a building or to an event or to a soccer game. Any of those things, please, we need your help on this.

“Last week, I sent out several memorandums to you because they continued to happen. I am not singling out any parent, we're all parents, these things are going to happen. But if you haven't had that conversation with your own child yet, please do so tonight. All right? And again, if you're on those social media accounts, and you want to talk about everything that's good and bad in a district, that's fantastic. It's a great thing. It's a great thing and get it all out there. Make sure you say this tonight on your social media accounts. We need your help, all right? I don't want to see anyone getting hurt. Okay?

“So specifically, when a threat does occur, and it's any type of perceived threat, we don't think about it as administrators, as a safety services team. We don't say: hey, we wonder if that's a real gun or not … that kids a good kid … we don't say that. We take it [that] the threat is for real. There's then [what is] called an active lockdown … All those things I talked about, those things that are secure things that you may not know about, those go into effect – all those mitigation factors – including a team of trained professionals from the police department, for this reason, coming into a building with deeper weapons, okay, and you know what I'm talking about, right – ready to put down a threat. When that happens, your child takes out his or her phone and texts you right away and says: 'Mommy, Daddy, I'm scared … I don't know what's happening. This is for real, right?' And you immediately as a parent want to get in your car and fly up here because you're going to kick the door and go get your child, right? I am telling you this – that is absolutely not going to happen. Because if there is an active threat, you are not getting into the building. Okay? All you are going to do is be stopped by the police, because you may become part of the active threat. Think about that for a second.

“I totally feel what you're what you're feeling at that moment. I’ve been through it before myself with my kids, it's a scary thing. We have to have you understand that we train on this monthly, we do tabletop exercises, we meet with the police department constantly to make sure that these things don't happen. Because this is the world we live in, unfortunately. It's a scary thing. This board is incredible because we do everything we possibly can to demilitarize the classrooms. We have things in classrooms that the teachers have at their disposal, that your children don't even know are there. Okay, we don't want them to live like that. We don't want them to say: Hey, what's this on the windows or whatever, we don't need that. We want them to be kids. Right? But we're ready. We're ready. And we proved that several weeks ago with this lockdown event that we had, okay? There is no way to tell you as soon as it's happening: Hi, this is Dr. Tomko, we're in an act of lockdown at School 20, just letting you know there was a weapon there, there was a gun there … it's not going to happen. As soon as the scene is secure, the first thing I could possibly do is go to my phone and go on my [social media] account, and I can say: Lockdown at or a safety event at the middle school, or wherever it is … everyone is safe. That's the first thing I can say to you. Why? Because it's an active crime scene or whatever you want to call it. It's an active investigation. Right? But to me as a parent, even though you're not going to be happy with it, because I'm not happy with it, that's the most I can tell you at that point … is that your child is safe.

“So regardless of how quick that is, as soon as I get all clear – 'all right, we're clear' – boom, that’s the first thing I do. Then we work on sending the email out. Now the email has to come out from an office area – usually comes out from the school – which the office was actively in a lockdown. So the quickest thing is me to notify you first, and then my office gets out an email as quick as we can. This is the way it happens. And we do a really good job of notifying here as quick as we can.

“Now moving forward, you then probably want to take your child home, which is which is normal. If you want to do that, there's a timeframe for that. Once the building is clear, then you can as a parent, come up and get your child if you want. But you have to realize that the secretaries and assistants are still trying to make sure all of our children are okay – there are probably some children in the building that are nervous, and we get the counselors there to see them. So we're a little busy answering phone calls, and you're probably in a line of 100 other parents. It's going to take some time to get your child. It's not that simple. But it is your perogative to take your child's home, that's fine. But please be patient with that. I don't suggest that – I think the best thing for your child at that time is to be in the normal environment, be with his or her friends, be with our counselors, be with our administrators who say: 'Listen, this was horrible, but it's okay … we're okay … we did a great job.'

“Our Safety Services team, I applaud them, the police, I applaud them, the administrators, the teachers, the kids did an incredible job. The individual students who also saw the threat did a fantastic job letting us know. Okay, now, was it a ‘real threat?’ No, but we didn't know at the time.

“Now, I will also clear up a few things that were on social media, just so we're all aware of this because it's important. First thing is this. I know certain individuals said that they were on scene in 60 seconds … Nobody was on scene in 60 seconds, that absolutely did not happen.

“Number two, elected officials, administrators, we do not run to a scene. We have our protocols in place, we all do what we need to do to make sure that scene is secure. At that point, when there is an active lockdown that takes place, it's something called ‘incident command.’ The school loses all command of the incident. Do you really think that myself or a principal – with all due respect to our principals – should now be in control of a number of armed police officers in a building? Absolutely not. At that moment, we lose total control of the scene, as long as all of our students are locked down, and they are safe in their rooms.

“At that point, when I work with the [police] chief and I'm putting out a statement to you, sometimes it's several hours later. And sometimes it only has little bits and pieces. And by that time, the rumors have spread incredibly, right? Because we know how things go. It's not Belleville, it's everywhere. And that's fine. But there is nothing but transparency on my part. And I'll just speak for me in Belleville – I won't speak for all the other superintendents in the country. But there's nothing more important than transparency on my part when this happens, because there's nothing to hide. Right? If something occurred, you need to know about it. If we messed up on something you need to know about it. If there's something we need to improve on, you're going to know about it. Because that's how we get better. Right?

“This procedure and protocol that happened this past several weeks ago, was almost textbook perfect. I'm very proud of everyone. And again, once the chief and I are the deputy chief or emergency management, once we know exactly what we can release to the public, that's when you get the full story. And you still don't have the full story, obviously, right? Because it's still an active investigation. But what we can learn from all this is one thing. Please make sure that your child is not the one to bring something in that can cause that chaos, because that's what it was. It's chaos. Right? It's losing sleep at night. It's anxiety for your children. It's anxiety for the teachers, right? It's dangerous when the police are flying here at 100 miles an hour to get to a school … pedestrians … all those things. Please make sure your children understand that these are not things to bring to a building. These are things to stay at home, or go to work with dad or mom or whatever it is. You want to shoot a paintball gun with your kid on the weekend, by all means, go ahead. That's great. He or she should not bring it into a building. It's very simple. That to me, that's a simple point. Please have those conversations.

“Again, I'm not saying that we're 100% perfect at mitigating danger here. But we do a really good job. Our intelligence here, our kids here, they are really good at it. I have to say it's second to none. So I wanted to just kind of clear that up a little bit with all of you. If you have any specific questions about it and you want to see me, you want to meet with me and talk to me face to face, I'll absolutely make time for you in my office. So we can talk about it. But again, I think we did an incredible job. And we'll continue to do that. Hopefully, in our lifetimes, we'll never have to worry about that again. But if we if we do have to worry about that again, we will absolutely be ready for it. So I want to thank the police department publicly: Chief Minichini, Assistant Chief Corbo … all the things that we practice, all the times that we put in, along with all of our incredible staff members, our administrators … [we] just did a fantastic job making sure that everyone left that building safe that day … and we continued the school day. So again, I'll say ‘progress to that’ and just an incredible job.”

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