Cosumnes River College announced in-person classes and services will resume on Tuesday after the campus was shut down since the lockdown on Nov. 21.
CRC President Ed Bush held a faculty meeting on Monday to discuss the extension of remote operations, and Bush shared more details about the threat of violence made towards the campus.
“This past Monday, the college went into a lockdown because of a threat from someone who was a student at CRC,” Bush said. “The student made a threat to an individual administrator that was trying to assist, made a violent threat against the college.”
Bush said the threat “hit a particular threshold” where they felt compelled to put the college on lockdown.
“We have a greater sense of this person in terms of their history and their background,” Bush said. “We’ve been able to start the process and complete everything on our end to give a temporary restraining order.”
Bush also said the Sacramento Police Department issued a warrant for the suspect’s arrest.
“All of those are the factors where we feel much more comfortable to be able to reopen our college, at least our on-ground operations tomorrow,” Bush said.
The Chief of Police of the Los Rios Police Department Larry Savidge spoke about why the name and photos of the suspect have not been released.
“It’s not as simple as many of you may think,” Savidge said. “You have to determine what photo are we going to use and what is the source of the photo?”
Savidge said there are privacy issues with releasing a photo of a suspect when they did not hurt anyone or show a weapon.
“If this situation was where someone was harmed, whether a weapon was actually seen or introduced, those rules would probably get waived very quickly, I can assure you of that,” Savidge said. “We would have a much more aggressive response by everyone involved.”
Savidge said he was pleased with how effective the police worked together during the lockdown.
“Everything really went well and as well as it can be,” Savidge said. “I’m glad that we didn’t have to do anything that would’ve been much more severe or serious.”
The Chief Strategy and Communication Officer for the Los Rios Community College District Gabe Ross also provided insight on the incident and the steps that are being taken to provide for a safer campus.
“Staff did an excellent job attempting to resolve his issues and de-escalate the situation, but called campus police immediately when he threatened to harm the campus,” Ross said.
Ross said that the staff did not see a weapon in the suspect’s possession; there is no evidence that the suspect had a weapon on campus.
“The Los Rios Police Department has completed a thorough threat assessment of the individual responsible for the incident and that assessment indicates no immediate threat to the college community and no track record of violent acts in the individual’s past,” Ross said, in an email interview. “It is for that reason that we are confident in reopening the campus.”
Ross said LRCCD does a full post-incident review after every public safety incident to improve the protocols to help with campus safety. He said they will do a full review of this incident.
The Dean of the Arts, Media and Entertainment, Brian Rickel agreed with how CRC handled the situation.
“I think the campus made the decision based on the information that everyone has had and still has,” Rickel said. “Yes, I do believe that the campus made the right decision.”
Rickel also said that he trusted that the police were doing everything they could to protect the campus.
“I think that with the information that we have, they are doing everything in their power to make us safe,” Rickel said.
Rickel said he was unable to speak on behalf of his department colleagues, but clarified that he did feel comfortable returning to campus tomorrow.
“I can’t speak for other people, but I feel safe going back to work tomorrow,” Rickel said.
He said he believed that it is important for people to return to campus now that everything has been deemed safe. The theater department will move forward with their production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which will open on Friday.
“As long as the campus is open and we are allowed to, I think that it would be irresponsible for us as artists, as human beings, to not produce those things out of fear,” Rickel said.