Snap, judgment, studios.

So, if you think a crime, a tragedy is about to occur, what can you do?

Can you lock up, detain, punish or persuade someone who hasn't done anything, or done anything yet?

From Snap Judgements Underground Studios, my name is Gun Washington and today, I'm going to take the full hour to dive into a single story.

Because of course, a story is never just a story when you're listening.

The Snap Judgement.

We begin at a high school in Portland, Oregon, where school officials fear the next school shooter might be a teenage boy in their midst.

Because of the sense of nature of this story, we're not using real names, and let's their discretion is advised.

My name is Bethany Barnes and I'm an education reporter at the Oregonian.

So, one day in March, I was sitting in the newsroom and I noticed a new voice message on my desk phone.

All the message said was something along the lines of, I'm calling and I have a confidential Parkland tip about Portland.

And my heart basically dropped because it only been a few weeks since the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, where several students died.

My initial instinct was, did someone call in a school shooting ahead of time, I dialed the number back as fast as I could, my heart was racing, I was really worried.

And this person, named Mark, answers.

He asked me if I was interested in learning the other side of Parkland.

And I thought immediately, no, there is no other side to school shootings, like what are you possibly talking about?

But I said, what do you mean the other side?

He eventually said, you know, his son was going through a threat assessment because the school believed he could be the next school shooter.

I was really struck by the fact that I had never heard from someone that was under this sort of suspicion.

And the thing that he said to me over the phone that I couldn't get out of my head, he said, you know, my family, we're Star Trek fans.

And what I keep telling my son is what Spock says is the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

And I wanted to know more, that's sort of how the story started.

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