After the release of the article “Active shooter preparedness at Highline College: What the policies reveal”, Highline’s Director of Public Safety David Menke sat down with ThunderWord reporter to discuss him and his office’s response to claims made in the article. Below is that interview.
Q: The first claim, in terms of the policies made in the previous article was regarding Highline’s annual security reports (ASR), regarding the line “CSA’s are entrusted to promptly notify the University of Arizona of crimes reported”. Francesca Fender’s (Associate Director of Public Safety and Emergency Management Public Safety at Highline) response was “If we admire the way another college writes a certain section of the report we will borrow their wording.” Was there anything you wanted to add to her response?
Menke: “I guess a couple of thoughts. One is we all go through training. She (Fender) and I take turns every other year going, because it’s that complex.
And so we’ll go through training with either the Cleary Center, or this other group that also does Cleary law, but anyways, it’s a week long, very dry material. So, they really teach you, and provide you with the language, because that’s the law. It’s not that you have to come up, or have thoughts about it, it’s really just plainly like ‘Here’s the law’, you have to put that.
So they provide you with that language that you can use. They also said, like ‘Oh why don’t you go look at other colleges and universities, you can always borrow or adopt their language’, because we’re all doing the same thing. If you look at our Title IX page, or our conduct page, it’s not like anybody’s (other universities) is from scratch.
So it’s really just the best way to tell people the law. So it felt like it was insinuating academic dishonesty, where I didn’t really see that because it’s not an academic doc, it’s just expressing and sharing the law.”
Q: Do you see yourself or the department updating the report for future years and taking out mention of the University of Arizona?
Menke: “Yes. I don’t even think it’s in the previous one (ASR). I think it just happened this year only, because one blurb was added this year. Honestly, I take ownership of it too, mistakes happen. I as the director of this department reviewing everything should also have caught it.
We’re human, mistakes do happen.”
Q: Was there anything else you’d like to clarify about the ASR?
Menke: “I guess my only thought on that is, it’s not necessarily a response document, it’s more just a transparency document that we’re trying to just really share the crimes. You know, we talked about the mistake that occurred, that did not impact in any way the transparency of the crimes that occurred on campus, for that year.
So it doesn’t take away from any of the information that is supposed to be in there. That we are supposed to present to employees and students. It’s really to make sure that there’s full transparency so that students and employees can make informed decisions, (regarding) if this is the college they want to attend.”
Q: So, if a student was looking for Highline’s policy (regarding active shooters) where would you direct them?
Menke: “To the Public Safety webpage. The last three years worth of reports are on there.”
Q: Right, and if (the student) was looking for what to do in the event of an active shooter at Highline specifically you would direct them to the Public Safety website?
Menke: “Yes, if you go to the public safety webpage there is a section for response to different things. Also in the classroom, there’s usually a poster, that we have some of those response plans for.
For active shooters specifically it’s the ‘Run. Hide. Fight.’ which is on a poster for the classroom, and is honestly why we did the drill that day. It was to practice that part. You know, students and staff were asking them to do (Run. Hide. Fight.) during an emergency. While it’s hard to practice every portion of it, it’s why we do the lockdown portion, to make sure locks work correctly, students know what to do in an incident where they stay in place, or hide for that type of scenario.”
Q: This takes me to the FBI forum, during this event they mentioned that knowing where to run is the most important key of the protocol, on the Public Safety website, there is no evacuation routes for buildings. Under the safety maps, there’s nothing there. There is an assembly points map, but a lot of the assembly points are for inclement weather or if there’s a fire, earthquake, or something like that.
They lead students to open fields that are blocked in by other buildings. I wasn’t able to find any resources for students to know evacuation routes that are specific to Highline’s buildings.
Is that available?
Menke: “So for the evacuation, for the ‘Run. Hide. Fight.’ part of evacuating there’s no set assembly point, because when we say run, everybody’s run looks different. Like if you’re in this building, it depends on what information you’re being provided.
Because if it’s like happening in the lobby, you might be just running out a side door. So I don’t wanna say run and assemble at this point, because most likely it’s running off campus, to a safe location.
So, I don’t want anybody to have a predisposed, ‘This is the door I’m gonna use, or this is where I need (to go), but we do challenge people to be like, if you go somewhere, you know, where are your exits? Where would I go if I had to leave in an emergency?
And then (students need to know) what doors do shut, what doors do lock? It’s all good information to have to best prepare yourself.”
Q: If students wanted to see a map with exits for each building, is it available for them to see? (Is there a map for students to see ‘Here’s all the doors in this building, here’s the doors that lock’?) Is that something that a student could find?
Menke: “I don’t think they could find that. I know I’ve talked to the facilities director and I don’t wanna quote him, so I prefer you asked him.
But I have asked him about the evacuation maps for buildings and he told me that he works with the fire department and that they’re not required anywhere … So I don’t wanna speak for him on that.”
ThunderWord staff confirmed with Facilities Director Barr Holldorf, that South King Fire inspectors no longer require maps with fire safe evacuation points for annual inspections.
Holldorf confirmed some buildings do have these maps still remaining, in other buildings these maps have been removed or have fallen down over time, as they are no longer maintained by Highline Facilities.
South King County Fire Marshalls shared they always recommend these maps, even though they are not required for passing inspections.
Q: Just kind of sticking with the Public Safety website currently, there’s the run hide fight plan with the graphic from the University of Southern California. There is also a link to the Homeland Security’s active shooter module you can go through. Is there anything else you recommend for students that would be helpful in that situation?
Menke: “I mean, the one video that we did provide from the University of Southern California on our webpage. I really liked that one and I honestly changed it when I got here, because we had a very graphic one and I think the graphic video takes away from people’s ability to absorb the information. ‘Cause you know, they’re either impacted by it or aren’t able to receive information at that point. So we did go to the other video ’cause it’s, you know, it’s animation.
It’s really, it has the right principles in there of teaching you the principles of ‘Run. Hide. Fight.’ and what to look for, so we thought it was perfect.
That’s why we posted that on our web page. And honestly, we’re a college, we don’t have a university budget to make up a video like that.
But we don’t hide it. We didn’t take away the name of the university at the beginning of the video because it was made by them.”
Highline’s Director of Public Safety David Menke’s conversation regarding Highline’s active shooter policy will be continued in next week’s ThunderWord edition.