Bibb County, Georgia Campus Police Officer John Wilson recently received the Peace Officers Association of Georgia’s (PAOG) Officer of the Year for Valor Award. Wilson was honored for his role in the prevention of a mass casualty school shooting. Officer Wilson interrupted an imminent school shooting at his high school in Macon, Georgia last year. Officer Wilson intercepted a former student who was armed with a handgun and more than 170 rounds of ammunition. The aggressor came to the school and was preparing to open fire on a group of students. Officer Wilson drew his service pistol and was able to persuade the youth to drop his weapon after a tense standoff. Bibb County Public School Police Officers have successfully averted more than a dozen planned weapons assaults over the past 25 years. These prevented incidents represent just a handful of the many success stories from across the nation each year. It has been our experience that more planned school attacks are successfully averted than are carried out. Studying these successful interventions should be at least as much of a priority of our analysis of the attacks that are carried out.

More School Shootings are Prevented than Take Place

While the media and many experts focus intently on school shootings that take place, relatively little time, energy, study, and discussion is devoted to the far more numerous success stories where school shootings are prevented.   For example, from 1989 to 1999, the Bibb County Public School System in Macon, Georgia successfully averted six planned school shootings. Most of these events involved gang members. These cases were otherwise imminent events and resulted in convictions in superior or federal court. During the same time period, the district also averted one planned school bombing, a planned double suicide, and five attempts by adults to come to elementary schools with loaded handguns to either take a child by force or to shoot a child or staff member.

Lack of School Shootings was not by Chance

These tragedies were not prevented by luck. Officer Kenneth Bronson stopped an imminent shooting of a school bus at McEvoy Middle School because of the exceptionally high degree of staffing, training, equipment, and empowerment of the Bibb County School System Police Department. Though the school district is located in a community with very high rates of gang activity, homicide and aggravated assault, it is the only school district of its size in the state of Georgia that has never had a student shot on school property.

An Externally Evaluated Model for the Prevention of School Shootings

The Bibb County Model was highlighted by the United States Department of Education and was the only promising program for the prevention of school shootings that survived evaluation by the Hamilton Fish Institute as part of United States Attorney General Janet Reno’s Gun Violence   Reduction Task Force. Many of the individual strategies first fielded in Bibb County are now commonly practiced around the nation, many public and non-public school organizations still do not utilize them.   For example, many schools and districts still do not utilize the multi-disciplinary threat assessment process developed in Bibb County in the early 1990’s. This proven approach is relatively easy to implement and apply but is but one of the success stories from around the nation that should be more widely adopted more than two decades after it was used to stop not just one, but several planned school shootings. Perhaps if we spent as much time discussing concepts that have proven to be effective as we do tragic acts of violence, we would have fewer of these troubling incidents.

This excellent front office design can dramatically improve access control for a school. While this can be effective in reducing the risks for certain types of school violence, this approach fails to address the majority of mass casualty attack methodologies that have been utilized to carry out most school shootings.

School Shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck Similar to past school shootings

The shooting that has left two students and the perpetrator dead in Marysville, Washington should serve as a stark reminder of the need not to become focused too intently on any one type of school shooting. Many school and public safety officials have been intensively focused on how to stop shootings carried out by external aggressors. While this is one form of school shooting we have seen repeatedly in K12 school incidents for decades, it is far from the most common. Unfortunately, many schools have focused on target hardening of main entryways and office areas in response to the Sandy Hook event at the expense of other important prevention measures such as student threat evaluation, visual weapons screening, and pattern matching and recognition which have each been used to avert numerous school shootings.

Fighting the last war

We have noticed a pronounced tendency for parents, school, and public safety officials to focus intently on the most recent mass casualty school shooting event. This has repeatedly resulted in situations where many schools emphasize prevention and preparedness measures for one specific type of event while not paying as much attention to strategies that could help them prevent and prepare for more likely school shooting scenarios. During hundreds of school security assessment projects we have conducted since the Sandy Hook School Shooting, our analysts have noted a dramatic surge in interest in buzzer access, security laminates for front entryways and other target hardening measures for front entryways and office areas. While these types of security upgrades are often logical and in many cases decades overdue, our analysts have also noted a striking number of school systems and non-public schools that lack any viable student threat evaluation strategy. As the majority of mass casualty school shootings have involved students or former students, behaviorally centered approaches should be a priority for schools.

Too early to accurately determine what took place at Marysville-Pilchuck High School

Having worked seven targeted acts of violence and hundreds of more typical school shootings, edged weapons assaults and other major crisis events at K12 schools, my experience has been that much of what is being reported in the media at this stage will prove to be inaccurate. My experience has been that the most compelling and important lessons to be learned from a school shooting are in the case files reviewed by the expert witnesses during civil actions which typically follow the majority of these tragic events.   This makes it imperative that school and public safety officials be pragmatic when considering what is purported to have taken place in any mass casualty school shooting.

A lingering question that has come across my desk at least a dozen times lately is, “Dr. Shepherd, what are you recommending that schools do about the Ebola crisis?” My response is simple – the same thing that I recommended for schools during the pandemic influenza crisis – make a plan and follow that plan.

The current Ebola situation should be an exercise of biological incident planning for schools. Although, we have not seen US schools completely affected (although there have been a few scares), it is important that school officials begin meeting with local and state public health entities to form a plan of action. There are a few things that schools can do now to prepare for Ebola (and subsequently prepare for the upcoming flu season):

1. Begin/continue universal health precautions campaigns. Hand washing is still a great infection control method.
2. Establish and practice disinfecting/decontamination guidelines for all school facilities including support buildings, school buses, and other transportation vehicles.
3. Developing NIMS (National Incident Management System) compliant protocols, location, equipment and staff assignments. School nurses are the front line people and should be a part of the command staff if not incident commanders of biological incident for schools.
4. Encouraging parents to have alternative child care plans should closures be necessary in containment and building disinfection/decontamination efforts.
5. Developing a mental health plan for students and staff, in conjunction with local mental health services staff to implement during an incident. Do not forget that fear, anxiety and panic should be expected and it is important that plans are in place to communicate facts adequately.

It is unlikely that a full blown outbreak will happen, but maintaining a state of readiness for Ebola will prepare all schools and youth based organizations for almost any public health emergency.

For more on this topic, sign up for our newsletter and look for the issue that we will be releasing this week with more detailed information on planning and preparedness for Ebola and other outbreaks. You can also catch my interview with Campus Safety Magazine here!