GREENFIELD — Police Chief Todd Dodge confirmed on Thursday afternoon that there is not an active shooter at Greenfield Community College, and the alert that was sent out to employees and students was due to a mistake made while testing the alert system.
“GCC was testing a new system that went awry,” Dodge said. “This was a first practice and something went wrong.”
At approximately 3:43 p.m., an alert went out to students and employees stating, “ALERT GCC: Active Threat! There is an armed individual at large on the Main campus, RUN, HIDE, FIGHT. If you are not on the Main Campus, stay away. This threat is real and imminent! Follow instructions from college officials or local authorities.”
Dodge said that upon hearing about the alert, multiple agencies were prepared to respond, but then they learned that GCC had conducted a systems test and a drill alert had accidentally been sent out.
In a subsequent message that was sent at approximately 4:08 p.m., GCC shared that “the wrong button was selected to send” during a duress button system test. The college emphasized that there was no armed individual on campus.
“This was just a test,” the follow-up GCC alert stated. “As we integrate the systems, we are finding problems that we didn’t know existed.”
There is no active shooter on the campus.
