John Bingston, director of information systems with the State Center Community College District, insists that Datatel, the emergency alert text messaging system, was working properly on Oct. 14, the day that shots were fired in Parking Lot E of the Fresno City College Campus.
“The system technically performed exactly as it should,” Bingston said. The police department did not enter in the system until an hour and half after the shooting occurred.
“We actually invoked the system at exactly 12:46 p.m.,” Bingston said.
Bingston said alerts could have gone out sooner, but that the police wanted to create a new message rather than the premade ones, which caused another 10-15 minute delay in processing.
“They contacted us and wanted to do something different than usual,” Bingston said. “They wanted to create an ad-hoc [customized text] message instead,” he added.
Fresno City College faculty and students had expressed concern about how the SCCCD police department and the college administration handled the emergency alert system process during the Oct. 14 shooting incident.
In a open forum meeting that took place Oct. 16 in the Old Administration Building Auditorium, students and faculty questioned both the college administration and the district police department for the delay between the event and the time people actually received the alert. Reports indicate that students started receiving messages as much as an hour and a half after the shooting occurred. Most agree that the alert system did not function as it should.
Bingston says that the medium used to send the message can dictate how quickly it is transmitted.
He added that the text messaging system is very consistent with the relay between sending the message out and receiving it. His staff recently did a test of the text messaging system with a group smaller in number than the school population, and the time between sending and receiving was roughly one minute.
Using email, Bingston said, is what slows the process down.
“We don’t recommend using email, [because] it generally is slower than text message,” Bingston said. “Text messaging tends to go a lot faster.”
Bingston explained that the district uses Datatel, a district wide computer system that serves students, staff, faculty and the district police department. All student information is included on the system, including registration, addresses and phone numbers. Datatel is also integrated with the emergency alert messaging system, also known as the “1st2Know” program.
The “1st2Know” emergency alert system, which started in 2009, was created to inform faculty and students of emergencies or news regarding the campus and surrounding areas. Students are encouraged to opt into the program, which allows a text message to be sent to the number that students provide.
There are two other alert systems used on campus, SingleWire and Informacast.
Singlewire is an alert system that uses telephones and speakers that are placed on campus. The system sends pre-recorded messages about critical information regarding an event or crisis on campus. Informacast is similar to Datatel and SingleWire, but it is a web-based messaging system.
The goal of the SCCCD police is is to have integration of all three systems, to ensure that the emergency messages can be conveyed through multiple channels.
SCCCD Police Lieutenant Richard Gaines said the decision to use a custom message rather than a pre-programmed one is the decision made by police officials.
“We felt that we needed to send a text message out but we weren’t necessarily pressed that it needed to go out immediately,” Gaines said. “We didn’t feel there were any safety concerns at that time.”
Gaines said that the police department “drafted” a text message that would be sent out to students and faculty that was worded in a way that would not create panic or make the recipients feel that they were in any present danger. The pre-recorded message read, “Active Shooter” which was not the case of the shooting in the campus parking lot, which would have caused confusion and disarray among the students and staff.
“I think if something like that happens again, we will have a message pre-drafted that would be sent out a little quicker,” Gaines said.
Gaines also said that he understands the concerns and complaints of students and staff, but he said that it was a judgement call the department had to make.
“There is a difference between something happening and then not being an immediate threat, versus something happening and they were headed toward the center of campus,” Gaines said. “That would be a completely different scenario.”
