Police guns drawn, panicked students: Tucson High fights described to board

Tucson High students coming out of classrooms after campus fights erupted Sept. 13 encountered police with guns still drawn, and some later had panic attacks, a teacher told the district board.

School officials prematurely cleared a hard lockdown that day before the Tucson Police Department had left campus, adding to the chaos and confusion — and it’s happened before — school staff members told administrators.

“It’s the second time that miscommunications between (administration), campus safety and TPD led to direct confrontations between police officers and scared teenagers,” teacher Katherine Paul told the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board Tuesday night.

“It’s the second time that I’ve taken care of students in my classroom who were having panic attacks because they did not know where to go.”

Paul added that it was also the second time a lunchtime lockdown occurred without “clear procedure.”

She said she witnessed monitors struggling to guide students to safety and large parts of the school not hearing about the lockdown, due to an “inadequate alert system.”

As the fights were reported at Tucson High Magnet School on Sept. 13, rumors of a gun on campus circulated. Tucson police responded to the scene. Six students were arrested and one staff member was injured and received medical treatment at the scene. District officials said there was no gun and police did not find any weapon in a school search.

Tucson police officers responded as they typically would if there are reports of a weapon on campus, Sgt. Richard Gradillas, a TPD communications officer, told the Star on Wednesday.

Gradillas said the police department utilizes all personnel and tools it can when responding to a call like that, including drawing guns.

“They don’t look that friendly, but they’re also not meant to look friendly,” he said. “We’re making sure that we’re ready, just in case that was legitimate, but there was actually no weapon found on campus,” he said.

At the time of the incident, emergency calls and social media posts indicated there was a weapon on campus, Gradillas said.

Last week, Tucson High staff and the Tucson Education Association distributed a letter to the school's and TUSD's administrators demanding improvements to campus security. One of the demands pointed to a communication breakdown between staff, administrators and TPD.

Gradillas said he was unaware of the communication situation.

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In their letter, the staff demanded an amendment to lockdown procedures to specify administration cannot lift a lockdown without TPD’s clearance. Tucson High Principal Elizabeth Rivera has not publicly commented on the incident or the letter.

District Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo spoke at the Governing Board meeting about the importance of district transparency and “to be clear with what the next steps are following the unfortunate, very disruptive campus disturbance.”

There have been reports from staff that the school's intercom system was not sufficient at the time.

Cecelia Garcia, director of Tucson High's gallery, said during public comment at the board meeting that the area she is charged with does not have an intercom at all.

"Our team … did discover that across the campus … there were eight speakers that were identified that need to be addressed," Trujillo said. "Work orders have been put in place for those. Our team is going to be repairing those this week."

“I'm glad that we are listening and hearing about some of these issues and addressing them … unfortunately, it took an incident to do so,” Trujillo said.

Several speakers took the microphone Tuesday night, many of them faculty and staff, most to talk about their experiences during the disturbance.

Other speakers discussed campus police presence. One said he thought the Sept. 13 response was over the top. Another speaker suggested adding school resource officers to the campus employee roster.

A teacher read a letter on behalf of a colleague. It said, in part: “I believe the district should hire more monitors and community members as counselors to restrain students instead of calling police officers …. These issues should be handled by our monitors, certified adults from the community and district security officers who are trained to stop a fight among school students. I strongly oppose the presence of police officers on our campus.”

Governing Board Member Jennifer Eckstrom said she wanted a security briefing, in part to show how concerns were being addressed.

“As a parent, I think parents need to know what exactly happens during these lockdowns and when those lockdowns are lifted and what students are supposed to be doing during that time,” Eckstrom said. “When that lockdown is lifted, who has that say and will police still be in the area on campus?

“There’s a lot of things that concern me with this incident.”

Trujillo told the board: “We want to clarify the misinformation and more importantly, talk about our next steps in response to the employee concerns that we have received.

“We want to demonstrate with actions that we’re going to take the appropriate steps to address the concerns that have been communicated to us.”