To the Members of the Hopkinton Select Board:

Lt. Scott vanRaalten entitled his October 2nd press release, “Response to Swatting Incident, Ensures Student Safety”. Grammatical errors aside, that title operates much like an oxymoron. What vanRaalten should have written was, “Students Safe, Despite Our Lack of Preparedness, Because the Threat Turned Out to Be a Hoax”.

As a small business owner, I am required to comply with industry standards in my field, such as those promulgated annually by OSHA and ANSI. If I don’t meet those standards annually, I am held accountable for my shortcomings. For example, without proof of compliance with current industry standards, I would lose my insurance coverage.

Additionally, noncompliance would decrease my professional credibility and would lend support to any potential claim against me (by a business or individual who had hired me), regardless of the merit of such a claim. In fact, it is for those very concerns about ethics and safety that I once resigned from a job in the past; my employer was not sufficiently pursuing conformity with recommended industry standards and protocols that, in turn, would have maximized the employer’s ability to guarantee both expert craftsmanship and people’s safety.

Albert Einstein often is quoted about his definition of insanity. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Einstein might call us “insane” right now.

We Hopkintonians are gluttons for punishment. We love placing ourselves in the crosshairs of Lady Liability. We ignore that which makes us liable, and in doing so, we promote that which makes us liable. We promote our own liability. We promote our own losses. We promote our own failures. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Nowhere is the blame more egregious than with our continued refusal to demand that our Select Board in turn demand that the Hopkinton Police Department and the Hopkinton School District do the most important jobs they have in protecting our school children: exceptional emergency preparedness planning, training, drilling, and regular updating. Our Town’s leaders have been playing Russian roulette with our kids, keeping their fingers crossed that nothing bad ever will happen.

How have we treated our school children?

They certainly have (and will have) beautiful new buildings, fancy fields, and top notch technology education tools. Those are all good things that are very nice to have.

But those things won’t stop a bullet. Those things can’t help them make an educated decision about where to hide, where to run, or what to do if and when the unthinkable happens.

Since Columbine in 1999 some 25 years ago, this nation’s school districts have implemented life-saving strategies to protect children caught in the worst-case scenario, a scenario that grows more and more common with each passing year. Some districts have done surprisingly well. Others, not so much. (e.g. Sandy Hook in 2012 and Parkland in 2018).

After Uvalde, I thought things would change. I’m sure you did, too. We all saw how the lack of preparedness in Uvalde, Texas in May of 2022 led to the deaths of so many innocents. (In January of 2024, the U.S. Department of Education even issued a scathing Critical Incident Review of the Uvalde tragedy, detailing how the inactions of that police chief and the District ultimately led to the 90-minute slaughter and suffering of children and school staff). Surely HPD Chief Joseph Bennett and District Superintendent Carol Cavanaugh finally would wake up and realize that this could have been us. We had better get our act together! Right?

Wrong.

Cavanaugh addressed the Town, post-Uvalde, and in her May press release, claimed that “Hopkinton Police officers and school officials…regularly evaluate and practice emergency response plans to ensure they comprehensive and functional. Officers are well-equipped and well-trained to immediately respond to and act during any active emergency event.” Were that true, I’d be delighted. But I ask you: What evidence have you seen or heard that supports Cavanaugh’s claim?

Let’s break it down into its various parts.

Do school officials regularly evaluate emergency response plans to ensure they are comprehensive and functional?

I don’t have access to the District’s emergency response plans, and I don’t have specialized training in reviewing the adequacy of such plans. But if our District hasn’t hired (recently) an outside contractor to help assess the utility of those plans, then those plans probably are not as “comprehensive and functional” as Carol would have us believe.

Do school officials regularly practice emergency response plans to ensure they are comprehensive and functional?

I guess the answer depends on how you define “regularly”. The final stage of any safety training (for police, fire, EMTs, school staff and students) is drilling. As with the threat of fire, all involved entities (both the first responders and the school staff and students) must practice the evacuation and safety tactics promoted by the emergency response protocol. Over, and over, and over again. In other words, “regularly”.

Every teacher, paraprofessional and administrator I’ve consulted with this past week who work at the various schools has indicated that they receive training one day per school year. In reading through countless articles and guides on school emergency preparedness, I get the sense that “regular practice” in this context requires more than an annual “professional development” training, and that amount of training (i.e., one time per year) certainly cannot be considered to be “comprehensive” enough to protect our kids. Moreover, I think it has been years since our kids have engaged in substantive drills that required them to get up out of their seats and do things like barricading doors, blocking off window panes in doors and walls facing the corridor, staying silent, finding hiding places, or discussing options they might choose if faced with an unthinkable no-escape scenario. Last year, the Middle School was supposed to engage in an active shooter drill, but that plan was scratched due to nerves precipitated by an incident with a student that had occurred the prior day. I note the irony: There’s nothing like the threat of ammunition within your student body to convince you not to get prepared for an incident with ammunition. Frankly, that was a missed opportunity to delve into a difficult subject in a timely fashion.

Ask your children: How many times have you practiced evacuating the school building for a fire drill? Which route did you take? Why? Do you think you’ll remember that route if there ever is a fire? Why?

Then ask them this: How many times have you practiced either sheltering-in-place or evacuating the school building for one or more armed intruders? What rooms did you get to practice this in (i.e., classrooms on the first level and second level, gymnasium, and/or library)? What did you do? Did you learn any code words? How many police officers or firefighters did you see participating in the drill? Did you barricade the door? Did you cover the glass pane in the door? Did you hide? Did you shut off the lights? Did you turn off your phone ringers? Did your teacher notify anyone of the classroom’s status? Did you learn how to unlock and escape out of a window (on the first level)? If you evacuated, which route did you take? Why?

My guess is that we parents will hear a variety of answers¹. But my other guess is that those answers will not be reassuring.

Since Columbine, every school district in America has been on notice: Get your act together, have a plan, and drill.

As if your life depends on it. As if your children’s lives depend on it.

And yet, for years now, the Select Board hasn’t held the police chief’s or the district superintendent’s feet to the fire² for their perennial failures to adequately prepare this Town for certain emergencies, especially those that threaten our schools.

Which leads us to this past week’s swatting incident.

What happened that day? Inquiring minds want to know, and parents are entitled to know.

Unfortunately, we (citizens) can’t access the plans that were relied upon during the incident. Even if you submit a public records request for those protocols, you won’t get them. The familiar gang of co-conspirators – Chief Bennett, Lt. vanRaalten, Attorney Nick Anastasopoulos, and Attorney Bryan Bertam – surely will dismiss your records request by wrapping it up in a nice little Heisman move of “Sorry-not-sorry; that stuff is exempt from the public records law.” And with that, your ability to determine the existence of and strength of the HPD’s emergency response plan for an active shooter will vanish.

That, my fellow voters, is how government officials get away with hiding their weaknesses, their mistakes, and their liability.

You can’t assess the quality of a job performed unless you know what it should look like when expertly done. This is why “industry standards” exist, and this is why first responder leaders attend continuing education classes (like the Fall 2023 training that Fire Chief Gary Daugherty apparently relied upon in answering some individuals’ questions during the recent meet-and-greet event at the Hopkinton Fire Department). And because we Townspeople are left clueless about what the HPD’s protocols were in the past (and especially on October 1st), Chief Joe Bennett and Lt. Scott vanRaalten continue to skate by on underdeveloped and risky protocols and investigations.

Remember, Bennett is the same police chief who, per witness accounts, knowingly shared the names and contact information of 13 retired (yes, retired!) Massachusetts State Police Troopers with his 2023 Marathon team and told those team members to call those 13 (retired) Troopers in the event of an emergency. That list – taken from Bennett’s operational plan for the 2023 Marathon – was provided to the Select Board on March 19, 2024. Then-Board Member Irfan Nasrullah took the list, presumably to hold Joe Bennett accountable, but by all accounts, nothing has been done in that regard.

In fact, if you have been paying attention to Select Board meetings over the past year or so, you have noticed a common pattern; the HPD’s leadership is untouchable. Time and again, Bennett had thumbed his nose at Select Board requests to see actual evidence of something that the Select Board, within their purview, should be dissecting and assessing. Time and time again, Bennett is allowed to get away with repetitive and flagrant insubordination. Bennett, now aided by the loyal and similarly-unprepared Lieutenant Scott vanRaalten, has produced none of the things that the Select Board has demanded from him in order to determine if the HPD is performing its job as it should be. As a result, the HPD continues to be in such shambles and disarray that it recently proactively sought to cancel its application for accreditation³. Bennett appears to have no interest in the HPD being a viable law enforcement agency. The Select Board sits complicit in that decision.

Without a proactively vocal police chief who will transparently update the Town on his compliance with industry standards, especially those impacting our kids’ safety and security, we are left to basic means of inquiry. We attend public events and meetings and we ask questions. That approach yields some answers, but not all, because we are not experts in the field we are inquiring about. The only way that the community can evaluate the HPD’s and the District’s readiness (or lack thereof) for a real threat of an active shooter is to ask the HPD’s and the District’s bosses – that is, the Members of the Select Board – to conduct a thorough audit of the HPD’s and the District’s protocol, practices, and drilling exercises, relative to active shooter emergency response.

That will require the hiring of a consultant: (1) to take a close look at what protocol existed that day (not what may have quickly cobbled together since then), (2) to interview witnesses, and (3) to make recommendations on how to improve the HPD’s protocols, practices, and drilling exercises within the schools. The consultant should make findings, and they should be published. This Town owes us parents at least that much.

Those of us who have friends among the ranks of the Hopkinton Police and Fire Departments have had plenty of time to discuss last Monday’s swatting incident. If you are one of those people, then you know the dire truth.

Had the incident involved a real active shooter, there likely would have been chaos and carnage.

The reason both the school officials’ emails and Lt. Scott vanRaalten’s press release failed to reassure the public that the HPD had a robust Emergency Response Plan is because no such thing existed, at least not one that was “comprehensive and functional,” as Superintendent Cavanaugh touted in 2022. Even after Uvalde, Chief Bennett apparently did little to nothing to remedy the fact that his police department had not yet built an appropriately robust multidisciplinary plan for combating an active shooter in one of our schools.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “Well…why didn’t the school district and the fire department just take the lead and write a comprehensive multidisciplinary plan on how to respond to an active shooter?” The reason is this: The police department is supposed to take the lead on these matters, which I address below. But as to the fire department? Reportedly, they tried to get their colleagues across the street to put a plan together, but their request fell on deaf ears.

In the fall of 2023, our Town sent our estimable Fire Chief Gary Daugherty (one worthy of having been made a “strong” chief, in stark contrast with “weak” Joe Bennett, who has been weak in every way imaginable) to a nationally-acclaimed course called the “Executive Chief Fire Officer” (“ECFO”). By all accounts, it was a terrific course for those leading fire departments, so it was money well spent.

During the ECFO course, the would-be chiefs learned about practical and administrative aspects of their jobs, including current trends for multidisciplinary approaches to SOPs for responding to active shooters.

Recently, on the heels of the swatting incident, the fire department happened to host its annual fall event where it opened its doors to the public. Citizens milled about and engaged in friendly conversation with fire officials. When approached by some parents on the spot about the SOP that was relied upon during the October 1 swatting event, Chief Daugherty confirmed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, that after that ECFO training, he had in fact shared with Chief Bennett months ago, and then recently again with the office of the police chief (field by Acting Chief vanRaalten, as Bennett was and still is out on leave), a draft “active shooter policy and procedure” that Daugherty wrote, proposing to Bennett that his department incorporate Daugherty’s plan into the larger all-encompassing plan that Bennett should have by then built.

Parents and residents pressed Daugherty for more information. The only thing they managed to squeeze out of him was that, to date, he (Daugherty) still hadn’t heard back from Bennett (or, for that matter, vanRaalten) on his submission. Had Bennett responded to Daugherty’s proper and safety-minded olive branch with appropriate professionalism, Bennett would have expedited the pursuit of an expert contractor to help the department get a vigorous multidisciplinary SOP and related drill agenda drafted and implemented.

Some have surmised that Bennett’s apprehension to take action in that regard was perhaps rooted in a lack of manpower. Whether you have two people on duty or twenty, a department still needs to have a plan, and with less manpower, the necessity of a plan becomes all that much more important. Lack of manpower is not remedied by lack of a plan.

As we now know, it took this swatting incident (which appeared to be a real threat for nearly 30 minutes) to convince the HPD that it had better join the rest of the nation’s distinguished local police departments in constructing a high-caliber emergency response plan, complete with well-developed drills for police, fire, EMTs, school staff, Town officials, and students. According to rumors yet confirmed, the HPD is finally building an up-to-date active shooter protocol. This is reactive; Playing catch-up is bad enough when money is at stake, but it’s even more repugnant when children’s lives are at stake.

Similarly, the reason Carol Cavanaugh hasn’t had much to say about our students’ preparedness for an active shooter situation is because our kids haven’t been adequately and appropriately prepared for it. Her silence⁴ is telling.

The closest that Town officials came to informing parents about what had happened and the Town’s response was its short message that the threat had turned out to be a hoax (thank God), and therefore nobody was hurt or at a real risk of being hurt. The closest anyone came to mentioning what Standard Operating Procedures had been relied upon that day was when vanRaalten skirted the issue of protocol and said merely that “[the] district plans to review its emergency response procedures in light of this event and urges the community to remain vigilant”.

As mentioned earlier, police departments are the ones responsible for the deployment of well-developed multidisciplinary tactics during an active shooter threat. The lead agency in responding to any active shooter threat at any of our local schools is, of course, the HPD. Upon arriving at the location of any such threat, the HPD’s incident commander (here, vanRaalten) should assess the situation and follow a protocol unique to that type of situation. When developed appropriately and responsibly, police protocols for these types of emergency situations are not only taught to HPD officers, but also to the other multidisciplinary partners who naturally would be involved in protecting lives at the school, that is, the Fire Department, the EMTs, and, perhaps most importantly, the school staff.

Police and Fire personnel are not likely to come forward voluntarily to expose their own weaknesses to the public, to the Select Board or to the District. That said, the public should know what some of us have learned through our conversations with several sources within the Fire Department and even the HPD.

On October 1st, Lt. vanRaalten was in charge. As incident commander that morning, vanRaalten was supposed to be directing both Police and Fire in a “Unified Command” setting. When the incident was reported, radio transmissions went out to Fire and Police for a “Rescue Task Force” situation at the high school and the Fire Department used that message to recall all off-duty firefighters and EMTs. The industry term “Rescue Task Force” essentially means “active shooter”, so anyone hearing those radio transmissions knew what that meant. On the scanner (broadcasted to many ears), you could hear the Fire Department Shift Commander responding to the emergency alert, asking the incident commander (vanRaalten) and the HPD for direction and for the locations of both the “staging area” and the “Unified Command area”. There was no response.

The Fire Department’s Shift Commander did the best he could, considering there has been no training on a planned response in the last 20 years.

The Mass Casualty Incident trailer was on scene. The Fire Department reported to Scott vanRaalten, per protocol. vanRaalten apparently did not communicate an appropriate or adequate plan, or any plan whatsoever.

The Fire Department was staged out of harm’s way as per protocol. When the incident concluded and it was confirmed that it was a hoax called in from a man in St. Louis, vanRaalten showed how clueless he was by completely forgetting to release the Fire Department. That too could have impacted lives. If the Fire Department is responding to an emergency at the school it’s not responding anywhere else.

In closing, I’d like to add a note about the District administration. Like the officers who work for Bennett, the schools’ principals work for Carol Cavanaugh. Our principals are superb (especially our high school principal, Evan Bishop); they are doing the best that they can with the information and resources that Cavanaugh provides to them. I urge my fellow residents to call Cavanaugh with complaints, not the principals.

But even Cavanaugh can escape some blame here, because as I said, this miscarriage of public safety is the fault of one man alone: Police Chief Joseph Bennett.

Bill Belichick would have fired that guy ages ago.

Kevin Narbonne, Hopkinton

Editor’s note: Minor edits were made to this letter for clarity and conciseness.

Footnotes:

1. Here are some examples of what local kids told other curious parents and me: (a) drills were once or twice a year; (b) teachers taught different things; (c) some teachers presented options like sheltering-in-place, blocking the door, running, or breaking a window, while other teachers never mentioned anything other than sheltering-in-place; and, (d) nobody took it seriously, not even the teachers.
2. As an aside, don’t expect the “Hopkinton IndeBennett” (as some have taken to calling it) to criticize Joe Bennett or his myrmidon stand-in, Scott vanRaalten. The “paper of record” knows where its bread is buttered.
3. In March of 2021, the HPD was accredited by MPAC. Being accredited means being subjected to assessments by MPAC assessors who visit the subject department and review their accreditation files. Successful completion of those assessments ensures continued accreditation. The HPD was scheduled for an assessment in December 2023 or March 2024. (For whatever reason, the HPD sought an extension for that assessment visit.) Ultimately, MPAC scheduled the HPD for its onsite assessment in November of 2024, but then the HPD purposefully sought (for what purposes, we don’t know) to return the department to the status of “self-assessment,” which essentially means that the HPD was not ready to reveal its files in support of its accreditation and instead asked to return itself to the beginning of the accreditation process. Thus, this month (October 2024), the Board of the MPAC will vote on the HPD’s request to be returned to the beginning stage of the application process for accreditation. Assuming the Board allows that to happen, then the HPD will return to that starting point in November of 2025.
4. It wasn’t until this past Friday that Superintendent Cavanaugh substantively addressed the swatting incident in an email to parents. But in that email, Cavanaugh failed to identify the elephant in the room, and said nothing about what the students and staff had been trained to do. Instead, much like her police counterparts, Cavanaugh preached from a strictly reactionary pulpit. By then, Cavanaugh had had enough time to collect reasons why cell phones are an impediment to rescue during an active shooter situation. By all accounts, Cavanaugh’s claims are true. However, had the Town been appropriately prepared for an active shooter situation, all of that “cell phone” information would have been one of many messages that would have been provided to parents ages ago.