Working in Clark County: Jason Granneman, school resource Officer at Hockinson High School

Clark County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Jason Granneman didn’t sit idle when he learned that a student at Hockinson High School in Brush Prairie, where he is a school resource officer, made threats to “shoot up the school” last month.

A student articulated the threat aloud in the classroom at the end of a school day on May 21, and then another student told their parents when they went home. A parent then alerted the police. Granneman said he and the sheriff’s office became aware around 6 p.m.

“So I was already at home, and they called me and said here’s the situation. As an SRO, we have access to school databases and who’s who. The more that we started to learn, the more that we said, OK, this is something we’re going to have to manage tonight,” Granneman said. He went back into work that night to work with a detective unit.

A 16-year-old was arrested and made an appearance in juvenile court the next morning, The Columbian reported.

Though such a frightening occurrence is extremely rare at Hockinson, high school shootings have been a hot button issue on the national level for several years.

Granneman has been listening to those conversations — be it through children in the school halls or memes on social media — and doing his best to implement strategies to address the issue, in addition to all the other demands of the job.

He’s employed at Hockinson High School through a memorandum of understanding between the school district and the sheriff’s office. Granneman is the district’s first full-time school resource officer. Previously, the school employed a part-timer for security.

When asked if he or the school district felt that having an armed school resource officer was necessary, Vice Principal Josh Johnson said, “I don’t know if they see (having a school resource officer on school grounds) as necessary. I think we see it as a valuable resource.”

“We have a great partnership with Jason and the Clark County Sheriff’s Department,” Hockinson School District Superintendent Sandra Yager added in an emailed statement. “We appreciate the security and peace of mind Jason brings to our high school as well as the perspectives he offers regarding safety and security at our other two schools and districtwide.”

The position is a two-year contract, which Granneman renewed this past school year.

When Granneman started, he noticed that there was no formal “what-to-do” plan at many schools in Clark County in the event of a school shooting — none bringing students very seriously into the conversation.

“What do we do to help people identify and survive a school shooting?” he asked rhetorically. “Nothing. It was literally nothing. So we informed teachers to be aware of this.”

He then helped implement “Run Hide Fight” training, involving presentations and training for students on what to do in the event of a shooting.

“I don’t like the fact that I have to teach this, that we have to do these presentations, but it’s the world we live in,” he said. “We just can’t stick our heads in the sand.”

The role of security personnel in schools has come under scrutiny amid conversations about mass shootings in schools, and especially after Scot Peterson, a school resource officer and deputy with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Parkland, Fla., failed to act when a gunman entered Stoneman Douglas High School there and killed 17 people.

Granneman said he didn’t know what types of protocols that school had, but knows “without a shadow of a doubt” how he would react.

“I would neutralize the threat to the best of my ability. I am not going to stand by and let people die, especially when the community expects me to protect their children,” he said. “It’s ironic, because they don’t want an armed police officer in a school, but if there’s a shooter at the school, I guarantee their expectation is that I show up and neutralize that threat.”

Originally from Orange County, Calif., Granneman served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Then he studied maritime engineering, but he says he always knew he wanted work as an EMT or in law enforcement.

In 2000, he said he saw a sign on the side of the road saying that the Clark County Sheriff’s Office was looking for reserve deputies.

Granneman started with the sheriff’s office in 2004 first on patrol, then rotating to the detective unit. He left the detective unit after wanting a day shift position with more regular hours to spend time with his family.

These days, in addition to keeping an eye on things at Hockinson, he’s working on a statewide Mass Shooting Task Force, which was requested earlier this year by state Sen. Steve O’Ban, R-University Place. The group meets monthly and includes members from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, law enforcement and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others. He said he’s the only school resource officer on the task force, and that their most recent meeting was to talk specifically about school resource officers, including best practices and what is done throughout schools in the state.

Granneman is also developing another program at Hockinson about situational awareness training “mainly for seniors who are leaving and going to the wild blue yonder of college or whatever.”

It aims to help young people “prevent yourself from becoming a victim.

“Carrying yourself with confidence drastically reduces yourself from being attacked,” he said.