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Nancy Brown set up www.reportsomeone.com, where children can anonymously report another student who threatens someone with violence or may be bringing a weapon onto school property. |
When Spotsylvania County resident Nancy Brown heard about last month's Santee, Calif., school shooting, she just couldn't take it anymore.
Brown, 41, a mother of four and grandmother of three, decided she had to do something.
"I was fed up," she said. "That was it."
So she created reportsomeone.com, a Web site where people can report threats of violence, weapons at school and other concerns anonymously.
"I just didn't work for two days, let my phone ring, and worked on the Web site," she said.
She passes the anonymous tips along to law enforcement and school officials. So far, she has gotten seven tips, all in Virginia. Just one turned out to be a false report. She will not divulge the precise locations.
"How many people's lives have been saved?" she asked. "We don't know. But at least the schools are made aware."
Brown talks like a speeding bullet.
Her life is just as fast-paced.
Brown already runs Alexis Mia Publishing Co., named after her granddaughter. She also operates the yourmilitary.com Web site and has a nonprofit program to prevent teens from driving recklessly.
She juggles the work of her corporations out of a cramped office in her Ballantraye townhouse.
A copy machine is crammed into one corner. A fax machine sits on the edge of a bookcase. An electronic Rolodex teeters on top of office supplies on her desk.
She has two file cabinets packed with colored, labeled folders. Shelves are filled with dozens of phone books. She has six computers.
Her black-and-white cat wanders in periodically.
"I have to make myself go to bed," she sighed.
She burst into laughter, then a sly smile appeared on her lips. "Do you know I slept in my clothes last night?"
While the high-profile Santee, Calif., school shooting with two killed and 15 wounded was the catalyst for creating the site, Brown said the idea was born after a local incident about a year ago.
When her 15-year-old son, Ronnie, was in the eighth grade, there were news reports about another boy at his school trying to buy a gun.
When she asked him about it, she said, he told her he knew all about it. As a matter of fact, the boy had tried to buy a weapon from two of Ronnie's friends.
But he never told an adult.
"I asked him why he wouldn't tell me," she said. "He said he would never tattle. I cried all that day.
"I just thought, 'Wow. Why won't they tell? What can we do to make them tell?'" she said. "I never knew kids would not tell something this important."
Her site allows kids to anonymously report if someone at school is:
threatening to bring a deadly weapon to school;
threatening to hurt someone;
bringing drugs or deadly weapons to school;
talking about suicide;
involved with any illegal activity;
hurting someone sexually, physically or emotionally.
Gregg McCrary, a retired FBI agent who now works as a consultant from his Fawn Lake home, said a site like Brown's has pluses and minuses.
The anonymous nature will encourage kids to report something they might otherwise keep to themselves.
Children usually don't report threats either because they don't take the person seriously--or they do, and they're scared of retaliation.
"Part of it is we're all brought up, 'Don't be a tattletale,'" McCrary added. "It's not cool."
The downside is that someone can make a report against another student he or she simply doesn't like.
"You have to be very cautious that there is no knee-jerk reaction to an allegation," he said. "Those investigations have to be conducted very discreetly. Don't just immediately jerk a kid out of class."
McCrary was with the FBI for 25 years, a decade of which was spent in the behavioral science unit. He has a master's degree in psychology and advises schools and workplaces on the dangers of violence.
Christine Dahl Nixon, a former Norfolk police officer who lives in Locust Grove, was eager to volunteer for reportsomeone.com when she heard about the Web site on a TV news broadcast.
She decided to volunteer before she even realized reportsomeone.com was based so close to her home.
"I thought it was kind of fate," she said.
She has three sons, ranging in age from 3 months to 12 years. With the perspective of both a mother and a former cop, the nation's rash of school shootings chilled her.
"All of a sudden you put the faces of your kids on those kids," she said. "I can't even fathom something like that happening to one of my children."
Nixon said she doesn't know of any other Web site that offers what reportsomeone.com does. She thinks it's crucial for extra measures to be taken to avoid future tragedies.
"This Web site is a way to put it back into the hands of those closest to it: the families and the kids that are right there dealing with it," she said.
