Dear Watertown Public Schools Families and Faculty,
At this time the Watertown Public Schools and the Watertown Police Department have concluded the investigation of last night's threat.
We followed all protocols for a threatened act of violence against a school. And we've exhaustively investigated all aspects of the potential threat. In addition, the WPD and WPS administration completed a thorough external and interior search of the complete building.
As we knew at the start of this investigation, there was no corroboration of information and at this time there are no other indicators that lead us to believe that the threat is valid.
I would like to thank the individual who reported this important information to the WPD last night - it was very brave of them to come forward.
I would also like to thank the Watertown Police Department and our Town Manager, Mr. Raimo for their continuous communication with the WPS and for their immediate response to investigate all possible leads.
At this time, out of an abundance of caution Swift Middle School will:
- Have additional police presence for the full day today
- Have counsellors at the ready for any faculty and staff who would like to make use of their assistance
- The Swift administration and counseling teams will meet with all faculty this morning to debrief the situation and all students as well
- In addition, we will be actively monitoring all schools today for extra precaution
- Added security measures have also been added to all of our schools today
I would like to reassure the entire Watertown Community that the threat is over and that our students and schools are safe to run as usual at this time. I know that hearing about incidents that may include threats like these can cause feelings of fear and worry - that is completely normal. And in these cases, it's important to know that you can trust your school and town's emergency teams to do exactly what they are trained to do to ensure an extremely detailed examination of all situations in order to ensure that we can all return to a regular day.
I thank the entire Watertown Public Schools community for their continued partnership and if you would like any assistance please do not hesitate to reach out to your school's principal or me directly.
Sincerely,
Dr. Villanueva