After a police search last Thursday and subsequent terroristic threats charge for a teenager suspected of planning a school shooting, Kenosha Police Chief Patrick Patton joined WTMJ’s Political Power Hour to explain how his team identified the suspect.
Chief Patton said that the Kenosha Police Department received the report of suspicious activity at Roosevelt Elementary School, including moving around a local school and wiping fingerprints, early that morning. The police department immediately put the report out to the community to help identify the suspect. When the KPD had identified the suspect, they teamed up with Kenosha Unified School District to locate the suspect. Patton mentioned that the suspect was a former KUSD student and had attended that specific institution in the past.
Chief Patton said his team searched school-owned devices that the suspect had used to extensively research into what Patton described as “concerning behavior” including studying videos and downloading audio that was “synonymous with school shootings”.
The police department’s subsequent threat assessment led them to the difficult decision of putting schools within the school district, followed by those throughout Kenosha County, on secure hold, meaning no one was allowed into or out of the facilities.
According to Chief Patton, there was a “huge” coordinated effort between the Kenosha Police Department, KUSD, the Kenosha County Sheriff, and Pleasant Prairie Police Chief David Smetana, establishing communication with each other. However, the messaging was misconstrued as an “active shooting” according to a report from Gateway Technical College. Patton’s team ended up split to help clarify the messaging to Gateway.
Up until this point, there had been 150 threat assessments last year alone in conjunction with KUSD, according to Chief Patton. He also mentioned that his team took a trip to Parkland, Florida to understand the failures that happened there to help prevent similar incidents in Kenosha.
