This is the initial case file for a single-victim school shooting case. This litigation was settled soon after a school safety expert witness for the defense was suddenly withdrawn from the case. He was withdrawn soon after plaintiff’s counsel raised significant questions about his credibility. This case illustrates how complex school safety litigation can be.

School Safety Litigation Provides a Unique View

I have reviewed several thousand pages of depositions and other documents relating to school safety lawsuits during the past month. Though I decline the majority of requests to serve as an expert witness, I do accept a few cases each year. The cases I accept are typically large and complex requiring considerable attention to detail. For example, one federal civil action against an independent school resulted in a four week jury trial. The case involved allegations of severe bullying and sexual assault.   The case file came up to my sternum when resting on the floor. I was deposed for eight hours by an attorney assisted by four other lawyers. The school’s headmaster was deposed five times and plaintiff’s counsel spent an estimated $3.1 million litigating the school. After deliberating for about 90 minutes, the jury found in favor of the school on all seven allegations.

Reviewing school safety incidents for these types of cases is extremely demanding. Competent expert witnesses carefully review their case files. Though arduous, the process is incredibly revealing. Many of these cases involve terrible tragedies that can provide valuable lessons. One of the main reasons I accept cases as an expert witness is to learn how to better help our clients reduce the chances they will experience safety incidents. These experiences also help us aid our clients in reducing their liability exposure.   Reviewing the questions asked by attorneys and the answers provided by the people they depose is extremely informative. Looking at a case through the lens of both defense and plaintiff’s counsel also affords a unique perspective. Seeing a case from these divergent angles is different from what we see when we conduct school security assessments or from the viewpoint I had investigating incidents and testifying in court as police officer.

These experiences help us to help our clients see a different take on both the how and the why of their efforts to make schools safer. Learning from school safety litigation can not only prevent future litigation, but can make our schools safer.

Deadly school shooting by elementary school principal

On February 1st, 1960, 44-year-old principal Leonard Redden opened fire with a shotgun at William Reed Elementary School in Hartford Indiana killed two school teachers.  According to the February 2nd, 1960 Lawrence Journal, Redden entered the classroom of 52-year-old teacher Harriet Robinson and shot her in the chest as about 30 students watched in shock. Redden then apparently shot and killed 62-year-old Minnie McFarren while her students were present. Dave Woodward, Director of the Indiana School Safety Specialist’s Academy, was kind enough to forward a copy of the newspaper article about this shooting after a School Safety Specialist sent it to him. Dave noted that the article regarding this tragic act of school violence was only a short single column of a few hundred words length. He also pointed out that an article on whether the groundhog had seen his shadow on the same page was twice as long.

Has school violence really increased or are we simply more aware of the danger?

This is an excellent example of how the twenty four hour news cycle has changed our perceptions of school violence. If the same type of incident occurred today, the event would garner intensive media coverage. Each year, I find out about incidents of school violence like this one that I have never before heard of. The myth that major acts of school violence are a new phenomenon is a pervasive one. It is understandable that the intensive media coverage of tragic school events can and often do cause people to have this perspective. At the same time, inaccurate perceptions relating to the risk of school violence do cause significant harm. Unrealistic fears can prevent people from shopping at a local mall, flying on an airplane to visit loved ones and in some cases, not to participate in our schools. For example, I have spoken to parents who have decided to home school their children as well as adults who decided not to teach because of active shooter fears. While these may not be typical reactions, they epitomize the many ways that unrealistic levels of fear of school violence have a negative impact on our educational system.

School violence – Replacing fear with knowledge

Though the industry of fear is pervasive in America, we urge educators, public safety officials, elected officials, students and parents to gain a more accurate understanding of the real risks and proven solutions for school violence. Stephen Satterly’s excellent paper Relative Risks of Death in K12 Schools, published in April 2014, helps to bring improved clarity to the issue of school violence. It is important that we continue to replace fear with reason when it comes to school violence.

School Security Assessment Projects Nearing Completion

School security assessment projects have been keeping our analysts incredibly busy for the past two years.   Our dedicated team of 52 analysts managed to help conduct school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness assessments for more than 1,000 private, charter, faith-based and independent schools and one statewide school security assessment project in only twenty four months. As we wrap up assessment projects for clients as diverse as the Washington D.C. Public School System, Ketchikan, Alaska Public Schools, Richmond, Virginia Public School System, Bend-LaPine, Oregon Public Schools, Leander, Texas Independent School District and a number of the nation’s finest independent schools. Our analysts finally have the opportunity to begin several large projects that had to be placed on the back burner. Though we are finalists for projects involving nearly two hundred schools, the number of requests for school security assessment projects is finally settling down.

During the past two years, the 52 subject matter experts from Safe Havens International have conducted school security assessments for more than 1,000 K12 schools. During this time, SHI analysts also assisted with a statewide school security assessment for the Maine Department of Education, published a new book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters, produced more than two dozen new school safety training videos, and have helped author a number of web courses including the IS360 Active Shooter course for the 2013 White House School Safety Initiative.

Requests for Other School Safety Services Increasing

We are still continuing to see a steady increase in the number of requests for conference keynotes, other types of consulting projects, training programs and requests relating to expert witness services. Our analysts will soon be able to resume work on a number of school safety training videos and web courses as well as to increase the number of free school safety resources for our website. Thanks to the efforts of Morgan Billinger, we are also finally able to release a monthly newsletter in addition to our periodic release of The Safety Net.

Safe Havens has Grown and Improved

The massive surge in requests for school security assessments forced us to further expand not only the number of analysts, but to develop a highly robust web-based school safety assessment tool. We were blessed to have the generous assistance of Human Technologies in this effort. The assessment tool we developed with their assistance makes it much easier for us to develop and tabulate the data our comprehensive school safety assessment process generates.

I am humbled by the number of requests for services that we have received and indebted to our amazing team of subject matter experts. I am amazed that we have grown into what is now the world’s largest school safety center. The contributions our analysts have made to the field of school safety during the past two years are beyond anything I could have envisioned. I am eager to see the contributions our much expanded school safety team will produce in the next two years.

Some teachers and even students have been advised by at least one “options based” active shooter training program to keep canned goods to throw at a gunman during an attack. This advice is unsound, untested, dangerous and will likely be extremely difficult to defend in court. The danger that a student or staff member will attack an armed person who is not an active shooter and prompt a shooting or a suicide is very real and has been demonstrated through controlled simulations. There have also been numerous serious injuries to school staff during poorly implemented options based active shooter training sessions. Many school and law enforcement officials utilizing some of these programs are extremely exposed to civil liability.

ALICE Training Canned in Media and Social Media

Advising students and staff to keep canned goods on their desk to throw at a gunman is an inherently dangerous and illogical approach. This outcome is but one troubling symptom of a number of poor quality “options based” active shooter training approaches. After more than $300,000 worth of emergency room medical bills resulting from active shooter training were paid by one insurance carrier in Iowa, the Iowa Department of Homeland Security shut off their agencies’ funding for ALICE training. ALICE is one of a number of programs that teach close quarters combat concepts (CQC) to staff and in some instances to students. Make no mistake about it, no matter what instructors may say, any program that teaches people to physically attack a person with a gun is CQC training regardless of what you call it.

Options Based Active Shooter Training Injuries Verified

According to Jerry Loghry from ERM Insurance, these injuries were sustained during “options based active shooter” training sessions. It is important to note these figures do not count surgeries, physical therapy, disability claims or other follow up costs. Due to the many injuries that are being reported around the country, we anticipate considerable litigation against trainers, schools and law enforcement agencies who have been providing unsafe active shooter training programs. As an experienced school safety expert witness, I feel that many school and law enforcement agencies will experience significant challenges in demonstrating that they have followed appropriate standards of care in many of the current types of training programs. This is due to the way some of these training programs are structured, delivered and because they have been falsely advertised as proven to work.

Misleading Marketing Practices

Further complicating matters from legal and ethical standpoints are the sometimes wildly inaccurate descriptions of these training programs as a “best practice”. Being a new and popular concept is far different from being proven to be effective and accepted as the standard in a particular field. If you investigate definitions for best practice you will see that most definitions describe a best practice as a practice that has consistently shown superior results in contrast to other approaches. To make matters worse, trainees are also often falsely assured that “Good Samaritan” laws will protect them if something goes wrong. An attorney for the Indiana School Boards Association advised us that these laws often only apply to rendering emergency first aid and offer no protection for the use of force in self-defense in many states.

ALICE Training and Canned Goods

Quite a few people asked me what my opinion was about a school principal who sent a letter to parents urging them to have their children bring canned goods to school for self-defense. The letter states that local police suggested this practice and that students should throw canned goods at a gunman should an attack occur. Media reports attribute this advice to ALICE training sessions. If true, this is not the first time instance where schools have been advised to issue canned goods by options based active shooter instructors.

School Safety Expert View

I have now worked in this field for 34 years, have worked eight K12 active shooter events and have worked hundreds of other far more typical school shootings, stabbings and other school crisis events. Unlike most people in the field, I have actually been shot at while on campus and have survived an attack by an armed aggressor using close quarters combat techniques when I was not carrying a gun. In my opinion, telling staff and students to carry cans of canned goods to throw at a gunman is unsound and will clearly increase overall danger for a host of reasons.  There are many other options available to us today and unlike arming teachers and kids with canned goods, they have actually been validated as safe and effective to implement.