We just called the school. This sounds like a false alarm. We asked the secretary who answered phone about the possible shooter and the lockdown. "I don't know about any of that," she says. "We just had a fire drill."

During a second call, an administrator stated that there was no shooter in the school.

Update 2:49 p.m. An impromptu press conference took place between police and school officials outside Spingarn.

Commander Lamar Greene says the incident started at around 11 a.m. A security guard on the second floor of the school noticed a light-skinned black male that she did not recognize as a student. It appeared that he may have had a handgun or she noticed the butt of a handgun sticking out of a pocket. This suspect ran further into the school. The security guard notified the school resource officers (D.C. Police cops). Greene says the police went "room by room" and "floor by floor." "We did not find any suspects at this time," Greene says.

The school now has additional security.

A DCPS official John Davis said "the right precautions were taken. Everything is going as it should go." He called the situation "very unusual." There is no evidence that someone brought in a weapon, Davis said.

The students are now back in class. A little more than 500 students attend Spingarn.

DOC spokesman Anthony Diallo says there was no incident or emergency at the jail. He says the two-week lockdown has been planned for months and is in effect so guards can perform random checks for contraband items, cigarettes and stuff like that.

Legal visits are still allowed. A law student at the jail today said inmates reported that the lockdown is not routine–something happened inside the facility–but the student said client confidentiality disallowed providing further info on what happened.

Ann Keep, director of the nonprofit Visitors' Service Center, says lockdowns do happen from time to time, sometimes precipitated by violence in the facility, but as far as Keep has heard this one is routine.

On a completely unrelated note, the City Paper on Sept. 22 reported on the DOC's efforts to suppress an emergency planning document sought via the D.C. Freedom of Information Act. The department said releasing the document would "encourage an act of terrorism" at the jail. Turned out the thing was readily available from the department's own website all along.

Sometime over the weekend the plan finally disappeared from Google's easily accessible cache of PDF documents. Of course, you can still get the document from the Washington City Paper's website.