TORRINGTON – In a recent district announcement, the Goshen County School District (GCSD) and the Torrington Police Department (TPD), issued a statement regarding a suspicious person at Lincoln Elementary. 

“Earlier this week (May 20 – 21), the staff at Lincoln Elementary contacted a suspicious male inside of the school at the conclusion of a school event. The male was unable to provide a logical explanation of his presence,” the release reads. “The male was asked to leave, and the incident was reported to the school resource officer (SRO) for the building.”

“Yesterday (May 22), at approximately 11:30 a.m., the male was observed by staff members in a vehicle on the north side of the school, and was reported to have approached the school, before being told to leave,” the release continued. “Staff contacted the SROs, who located the male a short distance away.” 

“The man was identified and trespassed from all Goshen County School District property. Probable cause was not present to substantiate that the male had committed a crime,” the district release said. “After he was notified of the trespass order, he was allowed to leave the scene. The RO team provided information to staff members at the school so that the male could be identified, and TPD contacted if the male returned to the school. The Lincoln staff and our SRO team will continue to monitor the school for safety of students and staff.”

Shortly before the joint statement was released, concern was shared via Facebook by members of the community. The public post was shared more than one hundred times and it included a photograph of the suspicious male. 

“I think the first thing that is worth talking about is, it’s dangerous to not recognize when a system works,” Torrington Chief of Police, Matt Johnson said. “Frankly, our system worked this week.”

According to Johnson, the system worked just how it was intended to work.

“Here is what I know, a suspicious person in the school on the kind of tail-end of an event, no contact with kiddos, gets identified as somebody who doesn’t belong there by a staff member who is paying attention and knows what they are doing, a trained staff member, who contacts the person and says, ‘we need more information about what’s going on’ and the gentlemen was asked to leave,” Johnson explained. “That person then followed up with our SROs.”

According to Johnson, the SROs kept a watchful eye on the school campuses throughout Goshen County. 

“There was no crime that occurred in that first incident,” Johnson said. “We see him again outside of the school, a couple of days later again, not in contact with kidos. We immediately call law enforcement. I think the staff told that person to leave. They were not in a place where they should have been, on the north side of the school. He leaves, again, not breaking the law, and law enforcement contacts him a few minutes later to get better information about what is going on.”

“Some of the things that play into that are, one, that’s a win,” Johnson explained. “We’ve immediately got staff members and law enforcement officers that are recognizing that we have something that is concerning here, we need to address it quickly and effectively and we did so within minutes. Two, there was no crime committed in either of those two circumstances.”

Risk indicators prompted TPD to take additional steps to keep children safe, according to the chief. 

“Related to the gentleman, our offices utilized all of the lawful means of investigation that they could in contacting this person,” Johnson explained. “There were definitely some suspicious and concerning, I guess you might say risk indicators, related to what was observed at school by the staff, relayed to officers and also what officers observed in their contact with that person. We took some additional steps because of those indicators.”

“This gentleman doesn't have a nexus to this school or really any reason for him to be here, so let’s work with district administration and get him trespassed so that if he ever comes back on campus or any school district campus, he will have committed a crime that we can take action on,” Johnson explained. “The other part of that is we don’t have a verified threat, or a verified risk related to this gentleman. We don’t have probable cause to charge him with a crime. We have some suspicious behaviors and some risk indicators that we be foolish not to address and we did.” 

“It was never our intention to have his information shared as it was,” Johnson said. “That information was shared with the staff at the school so that if the person returned to campus and was committing a crime because that’s a crime now if that person returns after being trespassed. The intention of sharing that information was exclusively so that staff members could recognize that a person was committing a crime, and we would be able to follow up on that. We did not share that with the intent of public disclosure, and we did not share that with the intent that we were indicating that this person had committed a crime because they had not,” Johnson explained.

The TPD, or any police department would have not been able to share the man’s information because, at this point, he has committed no crime, according to Johnson. 

“Lawfully, we can’t do that,” Johnson said. “We can’t publicly accuse someone of a crime when they haven’t committed one. At best, we have the potential for a crime to occur not that one has occurred or really was even attempted to occur.”

The community needs to be vigilant and aware Johnson explained.

“Keeping our community safe requires all of us to be vigilant and maintain an awareness that worst-case scenarios can occur, even in small communities like ours. We need to be ready to take appropriate steps to investigate and protect those we care about when we see something suspicious. It is also important that we don’t jump to concussions or make assumptions based on limited information,” chief Johnson explained. “Doing so causes us to make bad decisions, act outside of the law, and create panic, which ultimately reduces the safety of our community.”