COVINGTON- It's not the first time area law enforcement leaders have been spotted talking together, but Wednesday, it was an important time.
"After the incident last week in Florida... we just want to share resources, information," said St. Tammany Sheriff Randy Smith. "Making sure we're on top of our game."
"I know we're doing a lot of things, I know we're proactive, but lets all just sit around and make sure we're on the same page," said St. Tammany Schools Superintendent Trey Folse.
The partnership and planning of school safety measures, in conjunction with the St. Tammany School District, has always been strong, but Wednesday's meeting with the parish's top cops and the schools' superintendent was about making them even better.
"The different struggles the different agencies have was good to know, but the relationships between all the police chiefs, all the school board members, school board personnel, law enforcement personnel, is just wonderful in this area," said new Madisonville Police Chief Barney Tyrney.
"We have S.R.O.'s (school resource officers) in all our schools inside Slidell, except for the elementary schools, and we're even talking about looking at that element now," said Slidell Police Chief Randy Fandal.
"Also too, we talked about don't be too complacent," said Covington Police Chief Tim Lentz. "Just because you have a school resource officer in school doesn't mean your school is immune for something to happen. In Florida, they had two school resource officers."
"In my opinion, it's three parts: our school system, our law enforcement and our parents," said Folse."We need our parents to speak to their students, share with their students and we need students and teachers, and employees and parents, to let us know if you see something, say something."
At several schools, even the children are doing their part in cultivating a safe environment through kindness clubs that promote saying something "nice" to one another. At Bonne Ecole Elementary, the Shine Club has been in place since 2013.
"A lot of kids are very mean. They're just like, go away, we don't want to play with you," said Asher Myers, a 6th grader. "But kids that are nice will welcome them in and make them feel happy."
"I want these kids to know that every word they say, every action, is powerful," said teacher and Shine Club founder Suzanne Pichon.
The unanimous message from school and law enforcement leaders all week has been to report any concerning information to the appropriate people, not social media. This goes for students and parents. Those appropriate people include campus resource officers or principals and your local law enforcement agency.
Making threats, real or not, and spreading word of threats, real or not, is a crime; one that several students across the state have learned the hard way this week.
"There's so many avenues out there to report it, even if you don't think it might be anything," said Mandeville Police Chief Gerald Sticker, "We're grateful, 99 percent of the time, it's nothing. But we have to pursue every one of these leads 100 percent of the time."