Today’s tragic news of a fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County Public Schools in Parkland, Florida hit home. Some years back, I served as an expert witness for another fatal shooting in this same school district. Like many other school districts of its size, Broward County Public Schools serves a number of communities with significant violent crime issues.
While it is far too soon to accurately know what transpired in this attack, it is a good time for school officials to review their prevention, preparedness, response and recovery procedures. We urge our clients to focus on those concepts that have proven to be effective over the years. While no school violence prevention or preparedness measures are 100% effective or foolproof, there are numerous approaches that have helped to avert multiple planned school attacks.
Effective prevention measures for school shootings involves a comprehensive approach. There are many different factors that can lead to a school shooting. Reliance on just a few prevention strategies can quickly prove to be ineffective. While it is always difficult to say what could have prevented an incident like the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, here are a few comprehensive measures:
- Measures to reduce the number of fights. Fights are one of the most common precursors to fatal school violence. In general, the more fights and other triggering factors a school has, the more likely they are to have a weapons incident.
- Multi-disciplinary threat assessment and management approaches. This is one of the most effective measures to prevent planned school shootings, bombings and mass casualty knife attacks.
- Training to support threat assessment. Behavioral training can help staff spot at-risk youth and potentially dangerous individuals. These students can be given extra attention and referred to a threat assessment team as appropriate.
- Suicide prevention strategies. Suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and other behaviors that demonstrate an increased risk for suicide are always a concern. In particular, these traits have been a factor in a number of planned school shooting incidents. Suicide prevention training for students and staff is critical. Effective suicide risk screening measures can also be an effective prevention tool.
- Police or armed security personnel. Armed security and police personnel who have been properly screened, trained and deployed have averted or mitigated a number of planned school weapons assaults.
- Weapons Search Dogs. Firearms detection K9s can detect firearms in student vehicles, lockers, public areas. There are now canines that can be used to detect firearms in large crowds.
- Thoughtful and effective student supervision. Proper student supervision can not only help to reduce the types of interpersonal conflict that precede most school shootings but can reduce casualties if an attack occurs. This is because properly supervised students can be sheltered more rapidly.
- Effective access control. Securing unsupervised exterior entrances and reducing the number of unlocked doors can be an effective layer of prevention for outside threats. This can even be a mitigating factor for a student attacker who attempts to enter the school surreptitiously. A building design where visitors are routed through a single point of entry where they can be visually and verbally screened by school staff. Florida has had legislation setting Safe School Design Guidelines since the 1990s.
- Random surprise metal detection and for some situations, entry point metal detection. Though not appropriate for all situations, these approaches have been effective for a number of school districts.
While these are only a few examples of proven prevention measures, I have found them to be among the more effective approaches in use by many school systems. While there are no guarantees, there are distinct probabilities and possibilities to reduce the risks of violence on our school campuses. Finally, I would like to remind you that schools are still safe places. You are less likely to be a victim of violence on a school campus than anywhere else. And even though school buses are the safest form of transportation there is, students are more likely to die of a transportation related cause at school than a shooting. The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School should serve as a reminder and a stark warning to update our plans but we must also remember to keep our focus.
Violence is not a leading cause of death in schools.