Changes coming to security protocol at UNF after issues alerting students of threat

The University of North Florida is making some changes after communication problems last week during a threat of a potential shooter on campus.

Investigators determined the threat was bogus and had been called in by a woman with mental health issues, but UNF spokesperson Sharon Ashton says they've decided to make several policy changes in case there's an actual threat in the future.

"We will be retraining everyone in the UPD, University Police Department, to make sure they understand the priority of how to best communicate a message," Ashton says.

She says the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office contacted the UPD on Feb. 11 at 5:50 p.m. to tell them someone had called saying they saw a person with a gun at the arena parking garage. About 20 minutes later, the 911 operator in the campus communications center was told to send out an alert telling the campus to shelter in place.

"Unfortunately the UNF 911 operator chose to send out that message via email instead of text message or phone call, which are the most immediate ways to get the word out," Ashton says.

She says the operator also had the option to use the public address system, both inside buildings and externally in parking lots, but she decided against that as well.

Ashton says those decisions caused a domino effect that made the situation worse. She says the vendor the school uses to send out emails tried to send out 40,000 alerts, but about 1,500 of those messages were never delivered.

After all the problems, it was decided a debriefing should be held with the school's president, campus police and the crisis management team. Ashton says now they are putting safeguards in place.

Those safeguards include posting detailed instructions in the communications center to ensure everyone knows the best way to get a message out quickly in case of emergency. They are also looking at increasing the number of employees in the center, because Ashton says the 911 calls start coming in rapidly in a situation like the one last week.

Ashton says when the crisis management team holds their monthly meeting in March, they will go through last week's scare minute by minute to talk about what occurred and what should have occurred.

She also says they will work with the email vendor to make sure there's a way to send all 40,000 emails without getting some of them hung up.

"In hindsight there are some things with communication that could have been done better, and we will work on that because safety is the number one priority," Ashton says.