{"id":30288,"date":"2023-12-07T19:03:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T02:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/swat-call-sends-durango-high-school-into-secure-mode\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:16:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:16:04","slug":"swat-call-sends-durango-high-school-into-secure-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/swat-call-sends-durango-high-school-into-secure-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Swat\u2019 call sends Durango High School into \u2018secure\u2019 mode"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Jerry
Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<br><br>02\/17\/2016\/- Durango High School building.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango High School was placed into a \u201csecure\u201d safety status Thursday after authorities received a phone call suggesting a threat to the high school, according to Durango Police Department.<\/p>\n

The call came in about 10:10 a.m. and the threat was cleared at 11:07 a.m., said Deputy Chief Brice Current with DPD.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like it was a robocall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The call affected another high school in Nevada, also named Durango High School, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe threat was determined to be a \u2018swatting\u2019 robocall that affected DHS and a school in Las Vegas,\u201d Durango School District 9-R wrote in a notification addressed to students, staff members and families. \u201cSwatting is the action or practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nature of the threat suggested a student was possibly suffering from suicidal thoughts and might bring harm upon the school, Current said. The caller shared a specific first name of the student experiencing suicidal thoughts, he said.<\/p>\n

The police department worked with school officials, the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Durango Fire Protection District to secure the school\u2019s perimeter.<\/p>\n

Doors were immediately locked at the high school, and law enforcement performed a sweep around the area, according to the 9-R notification.<\/p>\n

Police officers remained at the school during a passing hour about 11:07 a.m. as a precaution. School officials were on hand to help inform students why police officers were present, said Karla Sluis, spokeswoman for the school district.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure that we do a good job in messaging to our students and our staff so that they understand why there are officers in the hallway even though it was just a precaution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

During a so-called \u201csecure\u201d mode, students are trained to return to the inside of the building, doors are locked to prevent anyone from entering and school activities resume as normal inside the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take all threats seriously and appreciated the swift response of our staff, students and law enforcement during this incident,\u201d the notification said.<\/p>\n

shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

locked while law enforcement investigated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[592,1065,1086,28,51,1310],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-30288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-high-school","tag-durango-police-department","tag-durango-school-district-9-r","tag-headlines","tag-police","tag-safety-of-citizens"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81026,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30288\/revisions\/81026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30288"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=30288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}