SWFL.io - Local NewsAnchor: Corey Lazar
•8/4/2026
CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK) — Keeping children safe at school has evolved from responding to threats to preventing them, especially after the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, where 14 students and three staff members were killed.
In 2022, WINK News reporter Corey Lazar walked through Caloosa Elementary with Cape Coral Police Officer Joe Zalenski. They met back up in 2026, and in just four years since their last interview, the approach in keeping students safe has grown significantly.
"We see a lot more activity online now than we did back then," Zalenski said.
Sgt. Joe Zalenski brought Lazar up to speed on what's new this year at schools in the city of Cape Coral. The sharpened mission is to prevent tragedies before they happen.
"One of the biggest changes recently occurred is where we have our own dedicated threat assessors now," Zalenski said.
The threat assessors are solely investigating whether a student poses a threat. When asked whether there are students who are watched, Zalenski confirmed that there are.
"Yeah. There's just no other way to say that. Yes, the answer is yes," Zalenski said.
The student doesn't need to commit a crime to be flagged. "In fact, we had an incident where everything but a crime occurred, and that individual was closely monitored," Zalenski said.
Brand new this school year, all schools protected by Cape Coral police officers will have fingerprint-activated gun safes. Each one, every day during a school day, will have the school resource officer bring in and take out their assigned rifle, along with other equipment such as Narcan in the event of an emergency involving an opiate.
After reviewing the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 elementary students and two teachers were killed, Zalenski sounded the alarm for the need for ballistic shields. Officer Jamie Bungard helped explain how they're used.
"The glass on here is also ballistic, so as you can see, we're trained to hold it here so that we just have better coverage and can still respond, can still see, can move around corners, and the cutouts allow for if we have to take a pistol shot around it," Bungard said.
But one big point Sgt. Zalenski wants to make clear that, with all this tactical equipment, school resource officers will always run to the threat, even if the shield or rifle is back in their office. "The SRO by virtue of the fact that they're based out of the school is so that way they're already on scene of the situation they can immediately respond begin addressing it interrupt that plan," Zalenski said.
All schools in all districts have threat assessment teams. These are groups made up of teachers, administrators, counselors and law enforcement to flag students and make sure they prevent any tragedies.
When a parent would know if their child is flagged, Zalenski said, immediately, during the course of the threat investigation or the threat assessment.