School leaders in Wake County to meet about safety and security after recent incident

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Wake County Public School System officials are set to hold a meeting Tuesday afternoon to discuss school safety and security.

It comes a few weeks after a shooting outside Southeast Raleigh High School following the football jamboree.

"You've got a few bad characters and they make it bad for everybody else," said Anthony Pope, a Wake County father of two, who shared his reaction to incidents stemming from athletic events.

A former educator, Pope said he did not recall these types of issues when he was a coach.

"Unfortunately, we're living in a time where these youth have access to weapons. They can get them in the streets. It's easy for them. And so what they do is they take this stuff from the streets and bring it into the sporting events, and it creates a lot of havoc," said Pope.

He's the co-founder of Men of Southeast Raleigh, a community group that works with local organizations, schools, churches, and others to connect with youth.

"I do believe that our youth want to do the right thing. They want to enjoy the sporting events. But there's just so many factors. My organization, one thing that we're doing is we're reaching out to young people whenever we can. We take the opportunity to go into schools," Pope said.

He believes the presence of parents at sporting events can serve as a deterrence.

"Parents just need to be visible with their youth at the game. As many parents can go out on these Friday night games or any of the times, that's going to make a difference. I think just having the community engage with what's going on at the schools, it's also going to be a help," Pope explained.

Community advocate Eddie Smith agreed.

"The game, football, basketball, soccer, baseball, they're stress relievers. We haven't taught them how to use them as stress relievers and they just use them as meeting points," Smith shared.

Smith believes empowering student leaders can also make a difference.

"I think that is a great way to help the kids where they are in a leadership role and learn how to counsel, have that conflict resolution in between peers (and) give them good ways of interacting with each other," said Smith, who focuses on de-escalation techniques.

He also wants to see increased presence of colleges and trade schools setting up at local games, in an effort to educate students about post-graduation opportunities.

Dr. Ken Trump, President of National School Safety and Security Services, said districts need detailed plans ahead of large-scale events.

"The security plans need to involve a great deal of specific security procedures with access, supervision and assignments for personnel, but also separating your spectators in terms of home team versus visitors, behavioral conduct code, making sure that you have coordination with law enforcement," said Trump.

"There's got to be increased security by the police department and additional security to come in. As quickly as these events start and are over with, get them in and get them out, because the quicker you do that, the less problems you're probably going to have in the long run," added Pope.

Trump added that it includes understanding the prospect of incidents that emerge from athletic events.

"The bottom line is you can't just wait until Monday to hire a couple of off-duty police officers for Friday or Saturday night's game and say that's the beginning and end of school security planning. You need to get down into the weeds ranging from the time people arrive and how they get in the venue, whether they stay and can go from the venue, what they do and where they sit and who's supervising in the venue and then what you're going to have in place to deal with any conflicts that occur when people leave in the parking lots and out in the surrounding communities," Trump explained.

WCPSS officials were unavailable for an interview prior to Tuesday's meeting, though a district spokesperson told ABC 11 that "security protocols are managed at a district level but specific to each school campus."