A message from President Joe Sopcich:
To members of our campus community,
Yesterday we experienced our college’s first “lockdown” situation. Rest assured it was not a drill. It was an alarming and sobering experience. As you know from our alerts, we had reports of a weapon on campus. Please know that our police force takes such reports with extreme seriousness. We are all fortunate that they do. Their challenge is always to verify the reports before we take action. The margin for error is non-existent. In this case, as we will in all cases, our decisions were based on what is the safest approach possible for our campus community. Ultimately, in this case, the first alert was sent out at 3:40 p.m. and was followed by seven additional alerts. The outcome of this situation was a good one, and the room-by-room search was lifted with the final alert sent at 7:05 p.m.
We would like to thank everyone on campus for their calmness and clear-headedness. We are proud of the way our JCCC Police Force responded to the initial report. Their performance reassures us that we’re in good hands. Our emergency preparedness group was on top of it all and proved excellent. Additionally, we got reports that, throughout the college, people were following their ALICE training and doing what they needed to do to ensure the safety of our students and colleagues. Lastly, members of our leadership team assumed their pre-assigned responsibilities and performed them admirably. We’d also like to thank the Overland Park Police Department, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, the Kansas Highway Patrol and MedAct for their professionalism and quick deployment on campus. We are fortunate to live in a community blessed with such professional law enforcement.
As we all know, security on our campus is of paramount importance to us all. This experience proved to be a learning opportunity for everyone involved. We will now set out to evaluate our performance and identify ways we can make it better. Lastly, and again, special thanks go to everyone on campus for handling this situation so well.
Sincerely,
Joe