CLEARFIELD — Police and school administrators in Davis County will take a closer look at how they can better respond to dangerous situations after they got the practice from a prank call Tuesday that caused people a lot of heartache and stress.

Schools take time to prepare for active shooter situations — they even run drills. But in this case, a lot of people were worried that it could have been the real thing. While school administrators say the teacher response and the evacuation all went very well, there's always room for improvement.

"It was the real thing yesterday, as far as we were concerned, when the first call came in," said Sgt. Kyle Jeffries with the Clearfield Police Department.

Police set up a perimeter and started sweeping the school, with several agencies working in close coordination. Inside North Davis Junior High, teacher training was being tested.

"We understood within 5 or 10 minutes those halls were empty," said Chris Williams, Davis County District spokesperson.

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A prank call reporting a gunman at North Davis Junior High launched a massive police response Tuesday from law enforcement across Davis County and put three schools into lockdown.

He said the drills paid off even if it was under some frightening circumstances.

"You have officers in a school with live ammunition, not knowing what they're encountering," Williams said. "It's a pretty dangerous situation."

He said that in the coming days, the school district and police will sit down and debrief, dissecting what happened and working on making it better in the future.

There were several complaints that parents were not getting information fast enough. Williams said that at the time, they didn't know what they had, and neither did police. They had to make sure they had the right information before giving it out.

While the response may not have been perfect, Williams believes the changes will be minor.

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