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Metuchen school officials air social media concerns

BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer

METUCHEN — The location where Metuchen High School students were evacuated to during a false bomb threat last month was shared on social media, prompting a recent discussion on how to handle privacy and security in the age of social media.

“I think [social media] is a huge important tool for sharing information, for celebrating successes and getting out timely information as well,” said Schools Superintendent Vincent Caputo. “However, we have multiple evacuation sites for our buildings as best practice. We don’t announce where we are going, we try to practice as many drills to off-site locations as we can. The best practices from a law enforcement [perspective] is you don’t announce where the students are going.”

Two Carteret brothers were charged with staging a bomb scare at Metuchen High School on Nov. 4 in an attempt to divert police before they allegedly robbed a bank in the borough.

The investigation subsequently determined that an hour before the robbery, one of the brothers anonymously called to report that a bomb was placed at Metuchen High School.

Approximately 800 children attending the school were evacuated immediately and remained outside for about two hours while the school was searched. No bomb was found and no injuries were reported.

Police quickly determined that the bomb threat was called in to divert police away from the bank robbery.

Board member John Mindler said obviously social media is going to catch fire with those types of situations.

“I know for safety concerns, I’m sure the procedures are that we don’t want to communicate where the kids end up,” he said. “[The location] was out [on social media] within a half hour.”

Caputo said he and Police Chief David Irizarry have had a number of conversations strategizing best ways to share the information.

“All of our communication from the district was designed whether it was the Honeywell call, whether it was the Tweets or whether it was through Facebook to ensure all our parents that everyone was fine,” he said. “The evacuation was handled smoothly [and] it was intentionally left out where our evacuation site was going to be.”

Irizarry said the Metuchen Police Department has been working closely with the Metuchen Board of Education for many years planning and practicing safety drills to ensure the safety of all students and faculty members at all district schools.

“When we received the bomb threat the evacuation plan was put into effect,” he said. “School officials, with the assistance of my officers, began moving the students and faculty to a safe location. The evacuation was swift and went flawlessly.”

Irizarry said unfortunately because of today’s technology through texting and social media, their safe location was compromised on social media outlets.

“We will be working with the school board to ensure that students and parents understand the importance of not communicating with each other during emergency situations,” he said.

Caputo said some students have phones and they let their parents know where they were.

“Again that’s not best practice [however] that’s not where the concern is,” he said. “The concern really comes when family members or community members decide then to put out on social media where our students are going.”

Caputo said because of that decision, it makes the jobs of police, school administration and teachers very difficult.

“We haven’t decided how we are going to share this information,” he said. “The best practice for our community, for our parents is to not put that information on social media. We will try to improve and do our best possible job of communicating to you, but we won’t share the location especially in [that type of] situation, which was a routine evacuation. It wasn’t much more than we did on a drill, we went to an off-site location, we did attendances, we checked and when it was clear we came back to the building.”

Caputo said what seemed like four days was an intense two and half hours.

“The staff handled the evacuation to the off-site center perfectly and our police and emergency responder folks were great,” he said. “We were back in for lunch and regular dismissal that day.”

Mindler said he doesn’t know the best way to solve the concern, but suggested communicating to the public that the district’s practice recommends that one should not communicate the evacuation location even if they are aware of the location.

Caputo said they are taking all the suggestions made to create a message that is even better and more clear for everyone in the future.

Board member Ben Small said what’s important for the public to understand is to not do anything that puts the students in danger.

“If it is a real active shooter issue and its publicized where they are, that is not what we want to do,” he said.

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