Johnson City school, police leaders say all threats treated with same weight

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Johnson City Police Sgt. Jeff Jenkins was among many law enforcement investigating threats of violence against at least eight local school systems over the last 48 hours.

Jenkins, who serves as officer in charge over all of Johnson City’s School Resource Officers (SROs), said he first heard about the threat while off the clock, which didn’t stop him from getting involved.

“I took a report,” Jenkins told News Channel 11. “I’ll take the report. I call and notify supervisors. ‘Hey, this is what we got going on.’ They’ll assign that case to a CID or an investigator.”

Jenkins is just a piece of Johnson City’s response to threats.

At Johnson City Schools’ central office, Greg Wallace monitors reports from students, parents and Washington County, Tennessee’s dedicated Homeland Security officer.

“In fact, I was talking to him last night at 10:00, so super accessible,” Wallace said. “They’ve been a great resource.”

Additional funding for Homeland Security was part of Governor Bill Lee’s school safety expenditures in the 2023 budget.

Whether Homeland Security is involved or not, and whether a threat includes detailed plans or just social media gossip, Wallace spends about the same amount of time responding.

The difference, Wallace said, is that responding to non-credible threats is about communication, rather than investigation.

“All of our time is spent on letting people know that we know about it and that it’s not serious,” Wallace said. “The other side of that is, if it is credible, we’re going to spend the bulk of our time making sure that investigation is done and done well. “

Treating every threat with the same level of seriousness takes a lot of resources; JCPD’s Jenkins said it can take up to four or five law enforcement to investigate a threat.

Still, both Jenkins and Wallace stressed that keeping students safe is well worth it.

“We have to disqualify any threat that comes in,” Jenkins said.

Wallace compared the importance of school safety to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

“One of the basics for teachers being able to teach appropriately and still students to learn appropriately is to feel safe in our schools,” Wallace said. “So we commit dollars to do that, to make sure families feel safe and that our students feel safe.”

Jenkins and Wallace said they both get threat reports from Homeland Security and other law enforcement.

Jenkins told News Channel 11 the Federal Bureau of Investigation has notified him of a potential threat three times this year, but none of those have turned out to be credible.

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