In a letter to Hopkinton High parents, principal Evan Bishop provided details about the swatting incident that occurred yesterday where students were asked to shelter in place.
Dear HHS Families:
This morning, at approximately 11:13 a.m., the Hopkinton Police Department received a call that referred to an alleged active shooter at Hopkinton High School. Everyone is safe. There was never any shooter or threat to the building. The police reported immediately to the High School, assessed the situation to be a hoax, swept the building, and determined the building to be clear.
Swatting incidents, unfortunately, are not uncommon; schools in Massachusetts have received internet-based phone calls conveying threats, all of which have been unsubstantiated.
As for our procedure at Hopkinton High School, once we received the call from HPD, the school was immediately placed into shelter-in-place. During this time, no one was allowed to enter or exit the building, and students and staff were contained in their classrooms. We recognize the anxiety a situation like this can cause for our families, students, staff, and community.
Please know that at every moment this morning, our top priority was the safety and well-being of our students and staff. We take any and all reports of potential threats seriously, and we make every effort to maintain an environment where students and staff feel safe. To that end, we have counseling services available for anyone who needs to process this morning’s event.
We continue to encourage our students and school community to report anything that could constitute a threat to school safety. As always, we work closely with local law enforcement to assist in these situations. The Hopkinton Public Schools appreciate the partnership we share with the Hopkinton Police Department and Fire Department.
Evan Bishop
HHS Principal
Unfortunately, the little twerp that did this will get caught and it’ll follow him/her for the rest of their life.
Unfortunately?
Yeah hope it does follow them if they ever catch the perpetrator. A lot of these swatting calls use VPNs which makes them almost impossible to trace. Glad it was a false alarm. Hopkinton High and PD did a great job taking the threat seriously and responding accordingly.
So Tim how do you know HPD did a good job? They didn’t do a good job with vehicle GPS that they wanted and we the people payed for. They didn’t do a good job with the Porter case ( allowing him to retire instead of suspension). They didn’t do a good job with the Brennan case(yes I’m biased). The chief for being unable to run the department. (Unable to complete promotions use of an old list of marathon state police emergency contacts all were retired prior to the marathon) And you believe acting chief vanRaalten has are backs.
Yes, it’s unfortunate some misguided child, and the chances it was a child is very high, made the poor decision to call this in.
So this did not go as smoothly as everyone (Hopkinton School system and Hopkinton Police) claim. My daughter was in the RAD class during this and since it was a nice day out they held class outside Since they were outside they were not informed of this incident. They entered the school (During this supposed lockdown) and were immediately approached by officers with firearms (better than the possible other outcome). They were frightened and caught off guard because they had no idea what was going on. So lockdown did not work as well as they claim. I was told the teacher (who had no idea that this was going on) opened the door with her key. Apparently this was not announced externally (not sure if it should be, but otherwise how would people outside know?). I am not attacking them on their response. Simply it was not as flawless as they tout. As of yesterday No one in charge has spoken to these students who were all girls to ask how they are doing or responding to this. The teacher of the class did reach out to us and filled us in on what happened.