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Police tell Niles schools to lock doors, review lockdown procedure
Published 2:15pm Wednesday, October 17, 2012Three schools in the Niles Community Schools district were told today to “lock additional doors” and “review their lockdown procedures” by district police liaison Kevin Kosten, of the Niles Police Department.
Supt. Richard Weigel said Niles High School, Ring Lardner Middle School and Eastside Connections School were the schools involved. All three schools are located within a few blocks of each other on the city’s northeast side.
Weigel said police would not tell him why the schools were asked to do so, but said he was told, “There is no known issue at this point in time regarding any of our schools. It is an issue in the community.”
Weigel said the affected buildings were not on lockdown.
“During the whole time, students were coming and going,” he said.
Additional doors are considered doors left open during the day for access by visitors, students and staff.
Kosten asked the schools to do this around 10 a.m. It lasted a short time, according to Weigel.
Niles Police Chief Jim Millin was not available for immediate comment.
It is unbelievable that the police think it is ok to not communicate what is happening to even the Principal of the highschool, or the Superintendent!! Apparently there was an incident happening so they wanted the schools to be prepared to go into lockdown, which is great! The problem lies in the clear or lack thereof of communication to the administrators of our schools so that students/teachers/parents don’t go into a panic.
I think now that we see the Tarwacki suspect was arrested it is easy to understand the reason the police handled it this way.
The Police told them to lock down and they didn’t! The police was trying to conduct a operation to apprehend a suspect in a murder they could not released this kind of information!
I live by the High School and would have liked to know what was going on. Even if they could give details, they could have at least let us know that the school was being locked down and that they were looking for someone. Just like if they would lock the school down for a bomb threat, it would be nice to get a text or email to know that I might want to evacuate my house and take my dogs with. Even if its just a scare. We get notification if the school is closed for weather, how difficult would it be to let us know something is going on.
Duh!! Yea lets let everybody know the cops are going to attempt to arrest a murderer! One person tells the wrong person and then the thing turns into possibly an armed suspect doing God only knows what! Obviously taking a life or two wasn’t an issue for him. Why take the chance of adding any more?
The cops did it right! They are in a “damned if you do or damned if you don’t”. Imagine if the guy started shooting if he knew they were coming to get him…. get a clue people!!