School district police go to greater lengths to stop violent threats

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Officers began investigating immediately when the Houston Independent School District received a tip about a student allegedly planning a school attack during a previous school year.

“The student had written, ‘Glock 9 in my bag, ready to roll,'” recalled Dr. Roberta Scott, director of the district’s Social and Emotional Learning department.

The tip about the potential threat was reported to the district’s “Say Something Anonymous Reporting System” app. Soon, Scott said her team worked with HISD police officers to obtain the IP address for the post. Officers also searched the student’s locker and made a home visit.

“When they got to his home, the really alarming part was what they found,” Scott said. “The guns (were) prepared to shoot up that campus or bring some type of havoc based on what was written in his journal that we found in the locker.”

HISD says seven credible school shooting-related threats were reported when the anonymous reporting program launched during the 2019-20 school year. During the 2021-22 school year, there were 34 credible threats, each one thoroughly investigated, sometimes in the middle of the night.

“I have no choice. Every tip we get. Every lead we get, we have to follow through with it,” HISD Police Chief Pete Lopez said. “Every night, almost every night, our night shift patrol officers have to go out to people’s houses to investigate incidents of reported threats.”

Lopez, who joined the school district after nearly three decades working with the Houston Police Department, said he didn’t realize how often school resource officers are out in the community versus just providing security on campus.

When it comes to threats of someone bringing a weapon to campus, or even threats from a student to harm themselves, he said officers visit the student’s home to determine if the threat is real and if the student has access to weapons.

“We show up all the time, one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning, and those are the scariest ones because school opens up between 6:30 and 8 o’clock, so we have to make sure (by the time school starts) is this threat credible or not credible,” Lopez said.

“The police officer just knocks on the door and explains as a matter of fact, in plain English, ‘Hey, we received the tip concerning your child. We need to investigate. Will you cooperate’ and 95% of the time, the parents cooperate because they’re concerned with that behavior.”

As school starts Monday at HISD, junior Nicholas Porter said he is excited primarily but also a bit nervous, knowing last year ended with a deadly shooting at an elementary school 275 miles away.

He didn’t know HISD officers make home visits when investigating possible threats at local campuses but said knowing the lengths they go through to keep students safe puts him at ease.

“It makes me feel a little bit more safe that they’re taking precaution and actually going out and trying to do something about it after hearing about a possible shooting,” Porter said.

A 13 Investigates analysis of discipline data from the Texas Education Agency found no community is immune to weapons possibly being located on a school campus, whether inside the school or just in the parking lot.

According to federal education data, more than 26,000 students were caught with a firearm nationwide at schools over the last ten years. Nationwide, it’s only about six students for every 100,000 enrolled.