Correction: An earlier version of this story was not clear on the timeline of events leading up to the lockdown. This version correctly states that the PCC did have a lockdown and that it was the result of the 911 call placed by a student’s wife.
Today at 2:39 p.m. a notification was sent out to students alerting them that the Long Beach City College Pacific Coast Campus was under lockdown and giving instructions to those on the PCC to shelter in place “unless directed by police to evacuate.”
Long Beach Police were responding to a threat of a possible active shooter on campus.
The campus was cleared at approximately 2:44 p.m. and the school’s executive team held a meeting in GG238 until 5 p.m. for students and staff to voice their concerns and ask questions about the incident.
Initially school officials told The Viking they could not comment on the incident and the members of the Viking were prohibited from entering the building the meeting took place in by Interim Chief Innovation Officer Tracy Carmichael in violation of state education code and the First Amendment. This happened despite an email from the college inviting members of the public to attend to voice their concerns.
The Viking was eventually let in after the meeting had been ongoing for more than 13 minutes. Viking reporters remains unsure of what was said during that time
LBPD officer B. Heam said the police were investigating a threat that spread on social media this morning that they deemed uncredible therefore they did not notify the public at the first incident.
Later, a student on campus was made aware of the threat and texted his wife that he thought the school was on lockdown. This caused the wife of the student to call 911 and report an active shooter on campus based on her husband’s text which caused a fleet of police officers to be sent out.
The school had no reason to be on lockdown based on the initial threat. “We didn’t lock it down, the administration didn’t lock it down,” said Heam.
That was until the 911 call was made according to officers that were already on campus at the time of the LBPD receiving the call. They were notified that LBPD was on the way responding when there was no visible threat on campus.
Some of the staff did not receive the email clearing the campus due to a glitch in the system.
“The system that we used had issues with the configuration and it only sent a message to students, not students and employees,” said Superintendent President Mike Munoz, which caused some of the faculty to remain under lockdown longer than needed.
Munoz said the glitch was fixed and that there should be no further issues alerting staff during emergency situations.