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December 5, 2005

You wanted to know

A reader asked. I've got your answer. What happened at Southwest Guilford High School to draw police out on Friday?

There were three incidents at the school, in decreasing order of seriousness: a) Bomb Threat b) Simple Assault c)Vandalism.

The bomb threat was called in by a student from a cell phone and an arrest was made, according to the police report. Lt. Angela Tackett of the High Point Police said the student was charged with making a false report of an explosive device. The call was made to the guidance office just after noon and the number tracked back from there to a student's cell phone.(Note: The News & Record doesn't generally report on bomb threats such as this because it can lead to copycat behavior. That's why you won't see a mention of it in the paper edition and I'm only reporting it here to give an answer to the question that was asked.)

The simple assault involved a student shoving an assistant principal and an arrest was made in that case too, according to the police report. Lt. Tackett said the assistant principal was standing in between two students that were fighting when she was shoved. The student in that case was charged with assaulting a government official.

The vandalism involved a car in the parking lot. About $350 in damage was done. No report on who did it.

And in getting these answers for you kind folks I've learned several things about police reporting in High Point (something I thankfully don't do very often.) One of the tools I'm more than happy to share with you is this: High Point police has a searchable database online where you can look up incident reports by date, street, people involved. Take a look here. It's even got a mapping function.

Unfortunately the reports for those three incidents are not online. I don't know if they will be eventually. There is a mention of them but no details. It wouldn't surprise me if it didn't since both of the folks arrested were juveniles. That's also why I don't have names for you. Police don't usually release the identities of arrested juveniles.

Posted by Jonathan Jones at December 5, 2005 3:29 PM

Comments

Jonathan,

You did a great job! You have earned the Jimmy Olsen North High Point Award for actual REPORTING work.

These are incidences we WANT TO KNOW. This concerns us and our children's safety and what is going on in our schools. The names are not important as the students are minors. What is happening is important.

Incidently, my child's car was either vandalised or hit and someone left the scene about two weeks ago. This is something we need to be telling our children to watch out for.

Thank you for doing such a fine job!

WWTK now
We Do Know

Posted by: We Want To Know at December 5, 2005 11:37 PM

Thanks WWTK. You're too kind.

Posted by: Jonathan Jones at December 8, 2005 4:25 PM