School Shooting Threat gets Student 10 Days

July 16, 2014 by

School Shooting Threat

A 15-year old student of Skyview High School in Vancouver, Washington, was arrested for making a school shooting threat in March. During a two-week period, the student identified those he planned to shoot.  He also looked up “how to commit mass murder” on the Internet. He even gave a date for when the shooting would occur — the first day of school in September.  The police did not find any evidence that the student had a firearm, or that he had access to one.

School Shooting Threat Analysis

The student’s attorney contends that the young man was “just joking”.  However, schools cannot treat any threat as a joke.  They, along with law enforcement, must thoroughly investigate such threats when they are made. For schools, this means having a multidisciplinary threat assessment team.  This team should be comprised of professionals who have skills and training in such assessments.  They should also know the person being assessed.  Teachers, counselors, school administrators, law enforcement, mental health professionals, pastors, should all be considered for membership on the team.  The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center has free resources to guide schools in this process. According to the US Department of Education and the US Secret Service, a multidisciplinary threat assessment team operates under six principles:

1) Targeted violence is the end result of an understandable, and oftentimes discernible, process of thinking and behavior. 2) Targeted violence stems from an interaction among the person, the situation, the setting, and the target.
3) An investigative, skeptical, inquisitive mindset is critical to successful threat assessment. 4) Effective threat assessment is based on facts rather than characteristics or “traits.”
5) An “integrated systems approach” should guide threat assessment investigations. 6) The central question of a threat assessment is whether a student poses a threat, not whether the student made a threat.
All elements of the team must work together to paint a true picture of the subject. The goal is to help the subject, while at the same time protecting your people.  The time to plan is now, before you receive a school shooting threat, or any threat to the safety of your people.
Filed Under: Stephen Satterly Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

School Stabbing in Front of Kindergarten Class

July 7, 2014 by

School Stabbing

A school stabbing took place in Paris, France.  A mother of one of the students entered the class and stabbed the teacher, Fabienne Terral-CalmΦs.  The school stabbing took place early in the morning, shortly after school began.  No one else was hurt.

The teacher had two small children.  The mother was taken into custody.  She was described by the French education minister Benoit Hamon as having “serious psychiatric problems.”

School Stabbing Analysis

We frequently hear that school violence is uniquely American, but that is far from the truth.  A look at the timeline of school attacks around the world is all one would need to see the error in that thinking.  Laws do not stop people intent from doing harm to others.

What is needed is better psychiatric evaluations, and better threat assessment processes for schools.  Schools should also take a hard look at their security procedures.
There should also be an understanding that all the planning in the world will not stop every event.  Therefore schools should also have robust response and recovery protocols.  There should also be quality interaction with local law enforcement.  The US Department of Education has an excellent Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans available for free.  This includes a threat assessment process.

There are more school stabbing attacks and attacks with weapons other than guns than their are attacks with guns.  It is therefore important to plan and prepare for them, ecven as schools prepare for Active Shooters.  In fact, an article in Education Week quoted this statistic, “Seven percent of public school students in grades 9-12 reported being threatened or injured with a weapon at school in the 2010-11 school year, according to the most recent data available from the
U.S. Department of Education.”

Don’t let “Active Shooter Fever” consume your school’s emergency planning.  Best practice is the All-Hazards approach.  Identify your local risks/threats, prepare for the identified risks/threats and mitigate against them.  Practice for them and be ready to respond and recover from them.

School stabbings are more frequent than you would like to think.  Make sure to include them in your school emergency planning.

Keep your eye on the big picture.

Filed Under: Safe Havens Blog, Stephen Satterly Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

School Attack Meant to ‘Destroy Everyone’

July 3, 2014 by

School Attacks

A Minnesota teen revealed to police the extent of his plans for a school attack.  His plan was to “destroy everyone”.  He planned on entering Waseca Junior and Senior High School, throwing Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs.  When the SWAT team arrived, he planned on killing himself.

He planned on killing his family as well, as he “wanted as many victims as possible”.  He acknowledged that they had done nothing wrong, that he had not been bullied, and claimed mental illness as the source of his violent fantasies.  He worked to hide them from others, especially his family.

School Attack Analysis

Here we see another school attack plot based upon Columbine, the unholy gift that keeps on giving.  Like other school attacks, the perpetrator was going to kill himself at the first sign of armed opposition.  Like other school attacks, the plan was to involve explosives, seeking a high body count.

According to audio tapes of his interrogation, the attacker hid his plans from everyone, yet there were You Tube videos posted showing him playing with knives and experimenting with homemade explosives.  This is called leakage, and is one of the warning signs to look for.  Other warning signs can be found in the following video:

Schools should be training their staff to look for these warning signs, and should have multidisciplinary threat assessment teams to evaluate students that exhibit clusters of signs.  The US Department of Education has created a great tool, along with the U.S. Secret Service.  Schools can conduct a threat assessment inquiry, in which the school seeks to assist the student.  They can also conduct a threat assessment investigation, for those times in which a threat has been made.

In either case, the goal is to get as many qualified, trained minds working on the assessment as possible.  This assessment requires a working relationship with local first responders.  It also requires a lot of coordination.

Plan well, plan ahead.

Filed Under: Safe Havens Blog, Stephen Satterly
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