COCC explains lack of Redmond lockdown text

A massive search for two men who reportedly robbed a jewelry store in Redmond Tuesday was quickly put on hold by reports of gunshots at the COCC Redmond campus.

That call sent officers rushing to the school, where they pointed automatic weapons at a building before clearing the students and faculty inside, doing a room-to-room search and declaring it safe, the call a hoax.

On Wednesday, the college responded to questions about why its automated emergency notification system was not used when the campus went on lockdown.

It wasn’t an accident. COCC officials chose not to use their electronic notification system at the very beginning.

School officials told NewsChannel 21 they did not use the system because the whole incident lasted only 45 minutes, the nature of the emergency was not immediately clear, and the people who needed to know about what was going on were already at the Redmond campus.

“Yesterday was a little hectic, in the fact that I was in Bend and needed to get up to Redmond as quickly as I could,” said COCC spokesman Ron Paradis. “It was pretty stressful.”

Reports of gunshots at the Redmond COCC campus Tuesday had everyone on high alert, including Paradis.

“Fortunately, between our public safety officers and the Redmond police and the other law enforcement who came, the situation was handled quickly and efficiently,” Paradis said. “We ended up in good shape.”

So good, that school officials decided not to send a text notification using their electronic notification system.

“By the time I got there, I saw that the situation was over,” Paradis said. “We decided it wasn’t necessary to use it.”

The system allows the school to send e-mails, phone calls and text messages to staff and students in a quick manner to anything from a weather-related closure to an emergency situation.

But with nearly 10,000 people receiving information from the system. Paradis said, “Most of the people who needed to know about what’s going on were at the Redmond campus.”

The school did use e-mail, Facebook and posted on its Website to notify everyone that there was a lockdown, once the incident was over.

With no one knowing what truly was going on, school officials decided to wait until they had more information.

“I don’t like to use our system like that to put out rumors,” Paradis said. “And that’s what we felt we would have been doing, and obviously over the long run, it was the right decision. Had it been something else, who knows?”

It was just the third time the college has had to deal with such a situation since Paradis took the job.

“In all three cases, it allowed us to kind of test our system and see where we were,” Paradis said. “And we learned from each of those incidents, and hopefully continue to make the campus safer.”

Paradis said they haven’t had to use the system for anything other than weather-related closures or delays.

He said most people have been quite pleased with the service, especially during the winter months.