Active Shooter Drills May Not Stop A School Shooting — But This Method Could

[bdickens]

https://www.npr.org/2019/11/27/7829...-stop-a-school-shooting-but-this-method-could

The crux of this story is that the typical response measures to school shootings - active shooter drills, hardened security measures, etc. - are believed to be ineffectual by some.

Active shooter drills are thought to be particularly traumatizing to younger children and those with developmental and anxiety disorders.

What HAS been found to be effective is something that I think has been discussed frequently in the pro 2A community: threat assessment.

"...The report's lead author, Lina Alathari, says rather than focusing solely on what happens after an attack begins, schools need a much more comprehensive approach, emphasizing "multidisciplinary" prevention in the years, months and days before a student actually shows up at school with a weapon. That means bringing together teachers, administrators and mental health professionals, along with law enforcement if needed....

"She defines threat assessment as a proactive approach in which schools 'identify students who are doing concerning behavior or may be in distress and getting them the help they need before they even resort to violence as an option.'"

This article specifically mentions bullying as one of the major factors that leads to outbursts of violence. It also suggests that over 20 years of anti-bullying campaigns have not only not helped, they have made things worse.

I might also encourage following the sidebar links.

For example, "The School Shootings That Weren't" demonstrates how the U.S. Education Department cooked the books to get the wildly exaggerated "240 school shootings" in the 2015 - 2016 school year number that antis love to throw our.

 

[lemaymiami]

Honest periodic threat assessment is a great idea for any institution that might eventually face an "active shooter" incident. Here, I'm not just talking about schools... disgruntled employees, rabid political types, controversial stances on "hot button" local or national issues - all contribute to the possibility of an incident. I want your local law enforcement involved from the start - and a designated person at each institution as their representative (and info contact point...). I'd also want the institution's human resources director involved since not all shooting incidents come from without - some come from within....

As you can guess, being a retired cop that was at the mid-management level... this is how I'd approach the potential problem. Projecting out into the future - I'd guess that this sort of approach will become more and more common as years go by - if the problem persists over time... I'd also try to put in place standard procedures tor dealing with with any info that raises the possibility of an incident on an on-going basis so that a problem identified doesn't have to wait "until the next scheduled meeting"...

 

[Double Naught Spy]

A lot of that seems to be based on the findings and unrealistic suggestions of the Secret Service report.
https://www.secretservice.gov/data/protection/ntac/usss-analysis-of-targeted-school-violence.pdf

For curtailing school shootings, they want a highly trained team at each school to be continually assessing the mentality and potential threats of members of the population. After all, you have a high school with 2000 kids and 50 or 60 faculty and staff members, you can't have just one person keeping tabs on everybody. Such a team needs to be at each school. So we are talking about funding in excess of 100K highly trained threat assessment teams and for schools such as larger college campuses, there isn't going to need to be three or four highly trained people, but dozens or hundreds of people involved in this big brotheresque endeavor.

Tell me again, who is paying for all these highly trained teams? You can't expect Home Ec. Suzy and Woodshop Mark and Algebra Jan faculty members to be highly trained threat assessment professionals, do you? They already have a career in teaching. At best, they are informants for the team. You don't get to be highly trained by taking a weekend seminar at your local PD or attending a workshop at a teaching conference in Poughkeepsie. This is going to need to be staff above and beyond the existing faculty.

Of course, the these teams need to be assessing the faculty and staff as well. Spooky stuff. No, it won't be weird having the secret police lurking in the schools and taking notes on students and faculty to see if they are acting a little weird. That isn't going to make anyone feel uncomfortable or paranoid.

The problem with identifying the traits of school shooters, as outlined in the study, is that none of them are diagnostic of school shooters. None of them are predictive of school shooters. Let's look at bullying. Sure enough, many school shooters were reportedly bullied. Who hasn't been bullied? Depending on the studies, between 9 and 98% of students REPORT being bullied. https://www.pacer.org/bullying/resources/stats.asp With such a wide ranging gap of bullying percentages, it doesn't even sound like we have a grasp on that concept, LOL.

For example, most school shooters have been bullied. Got it. What about the 99.9999% of bullied students who aren't school shooters?

Okay, so that highly trained school team identifies parties that may need to get help. Great. Let's see about getting them help. Do we move the kids out of the toxic school environment where the bullying is occurring to safe schools? Cool, let's build safe schools for bully victims. Do we send the threat assessment teams to their homes to assess their home lives to make sure that their homes are gun free? Maybe we just need to get the kids on more drugs to help them cope with their issues?

Being proactive is good, but there are significant and huge problems with how this proactivity is covered from training, financial, and administrative levels to how effective it will actually be in the real world.

 

[AlexanderA]

Active shooter drills are thought to be particularly traumatizing to younger children and those with developmental and anxiety disorders.

1. School shootings are exceedingly rare.
2. "Active shooter drills" and the like have become common, due to public demands that "something be done" to address the (largely nonexistent) problem. (This is the same as the impetus for gun control.)
3. The adverse side effects of "active shooter drills" (just as the adverse side effects of gun control) are not being adequately considered.
4. Contrary to public opinion, the best policy might be benign neglect before the fact, and ad hoc response after the fact. All the so-called "countermeasures" are counter-productive.
5. One of the main motives for school shooters is the craving for attention. Don't give it to them. "Active shooter drills" and the like magnify the impact of school shootings.

 

[IlikeSA]

I work for a major school district dealing with active shooter threats, drills, and threat assessments, and I believe they are important. Ideally, here is how we do our approach when we do a threat assessment.

1: We hear of a threat to a school, student, etc is heard via tip line, a staff/faculty member, student expressing concern, etc.

2: If the person who made this threat is at home, law enforcement will visit the home and speak with the person, and ask for a voluntary search from the owner of the home. This isn't always granted, but on the whole, is granted.

If they are at school, we will pull them from class and bring them to the office. We have methods of doing that depending on the nature of threat. I will not discuss the tactics on an open forum.

3: A building level threat assessment with standardized questions are asked of the individual and/or their parents before they go back to classes. People involved in that assessment may include one of our patrol team, administration, law enforcement, and a social worker or counselor.

4: We decide if we need to get more people involved for a district level threat assessment. This would involve people in the county mental health profession, the county or state judicial department, school district, etc. The student is administratively suspended if it needs to bump up to the district level.

5: At the district level, a determination is made of any type of support, safety plan, or expulsion from the district. Records of all types are examined plus personal interviews are conducted in that determination.

It's a fairly robust system and it works for a major district that has the funding, focus, and priorities. It has been successful thus far in catching threats and supporting individuals who may be threats later.

Regarding drills, our high school seniors have been doing drills since they were in kindergarten, and on a whole take it seriously. The drills will save lives in an emergency situation. I do not think it negatively effects the welfare of a child psychologically. We aren't shooting blanks in the hallway or trying to scare the staff either. You have to do the drill correctly.

I worry that smaller districts do not have the funding or knowledge base of a larger district. Our department is larger than 100 individuals scattered across a large number of schools. We have the support of the district and the population. We have several full time members who deal with nothing but threat assessments.

 

[fireside44]

For example, most school shooters have been bullied. Got it. What about the 99.9999% of bullied students who aren't school shooters?

Your entire post was excellent.

There is being bullied and there is being stripped of all dignity in front of your peers and humiliated in just about every way possible. Most kids experience bullying, but some basically don't have a social network and family support to help them out of a situation that is like a human rights abuse. Place someone in flight or fight five days a week 270 days a year, how long could you handle it?

 

[TikkaShooter]

First, I'm in my early 70s which means same as so many others of my generation; I was taught and practiced hiding under my desk in case of nuclear war.

Go to an athletic event and there is armed security. A few years ago, we went to see Cirque du Soleil. Before we entered we went through metal detectors and armed security was present. Our children are our most precious "possession" which means needs to be something done to protect them and not the useless hide under your desk.

 

[Dibbs]

I watch, agog, as everybody sweats bullets about how to prevent "the next school shooting", blithely ignoring the fact that all these shooters use a gun free zone.
Talk me thru what would be wrong with taking down all the "Gun Free Zone" signs, in the schools, again? Put up a sign that says "This school has armed security, in order to protect our students." Even if it doesn't actually have the security, it's no longer a Gun Free slaughter zone.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I work for a major school district dealing with active shooter threats, drills, and threat assessments, and I believe they are important. Ideally, here is how we do our approach when we do a threat assessment.

1: We hear of a threat to a school, student, etc is heard via tip line, a staff/faculty member, student expressing concern, etc.
....

All that is good, but it comes much later in the process than what is proposed in the above articles. Your school district (geez, I typed 'skool' initially) is working actively off of an actual reported threat at the earliest possible opportunity. That is probably about as realistic as it can get without becoming some sort of overbearing nanny-state situation where everyone is being watched and bothersome behavior reported to officials and the offending party taken for instruction or help. Mind you, these are often teenager and young adults who are going through a myriad of emotional swings, emotional developments, hormone changes, etc. There are going to be some fairly wild or extreme behaviors that are actually normal.

I watch, agog, as everybody sweats bullets about how to prevent "the next school shooting", blithely ignoring the fact that all these shooters use a gun free zone.

Interestingly, most mass shooters shoot places where there are problems to them. If you have problems at work, they don't track down the co-workers at all of their homes and kill them there. They try to get them at work. If they have problems at school, they don't track down all those people at their homes and try to kill them. They do it at school. If they have problems at home, they don't track down family members at their workplaces or schools. They try to kill them at home. There are exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of the time, people who commit mass shootings out of anger do it where the real or perceived offensive people are found, where the offenses occurred..

What you don't have is Johnny getting bullied at one school and shooting up some other random location. If Jenny has a fight with her boss and is humiliated in front of coworkers, she doesn't go shoot up another business. If a man is having problems at home, he doesn't go kill another family at their house.

 

[bdickens]

A lot of that seems to be based on the findings and unrealistic suggestions of the Secret Service report.
https://www.secretservice.gov/data/protection/ntac/usss-analysis-of-targeted-school-violence.pdf

For curtailing school shootings, they want a highly trained team at each school to be continually assessing the mentality and potential threats of members of the population....

Tell me again, who is paying for all these highly trained teams?... This is going to need to be staff above and beyond the existing faculty.

Fair enough. What do YOU suggest? Apparently, lockdowns & "active shooter" drills ain't cutting it.

What DOES work is identifying potential threats & taking preemptive steps. The Secret Service is expert at this & generally has a pretty good track record.

Yeah, it costs money. So does turning schools into fortresses. Everything costs money.

Again, what's your suggestion?

....The problem with identifying the traits of school shooters, as outlined in the study, is that none of them are diagnostic of school shooters. None of them are predictive of school shooters. Let's look at bullying. Sure enough, many school shooters were reportedly bullied. Who hasn't been bullied? Depending on the studies, between 9 and 98% of students REPORT being bullied. https://www.pacer.org/bullying/resources/stats.asp With such a wide ranging gap of bullying percentages, it doesn't even sound like we have a grasp on that concept, LOL.

For example, most school shooters have been bullied. Got it. What about the 99.9999% of bullied students who aren't school shooters?...

Having been bullied is only one of a whole constellation of indicators. Probably the biggest one is the making of threats.

 

[bdickens]

Of particular note, neither this nor any of the sidebar articles mentioned more gun control as an answer.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Fair enough. What do YOU suggest? Apparently, lockdowns & "active shooter" drills ain't cutting it.

What DOES work is identifying potential threats & taking preemptive steps. The Secret Service is expert at this & generally has a pretty good track record.

Yeah, it costs money. So does turning schools into fortresses. Everything costs money.

Again, what's your suggestion?



Having been bullied is only one of a whole constellation of indicators. Probably the biggest one is the making of threats.

Well I am flattered that you think I have taken the time to derive a universal plan to resolve the issue. The insinuation, of course, is that because I am being critical of something that I must have a better alternative, otherwise, casting dispersions on what I have said. It doesn't work like that. That one can recognize something doesn't work is not dependent on having a solution for repair.

Actually, the Secret Service isn't an expert at this. They don't handle mass shootings. They generally don't get involved with children and teenagers. To date, I am unfamiliar with the SS actually taking the lead on any school shooting, mass or otherwise. When was the last time they took the lead on any mass shooting? When was the last time they were involved in a school stabbing investigation?

The SS did a study. They found..."There is no profile of a student attacker, nor is there a profile for the type of school that has been targeted" and yet they built a list of attributes found present in attackers, though none, NONE individually or in combination were diagnostic or predictive. Tell me how that is helpful?

The most common motive? Somebody was had a grievance with somebody else. On any given school day in a typical US school, is this unique or uncommon in any way? No.

Most attackers had experienced psychological, behavioral, or developmental symptoms. Also not uncommon.

etc. etc. etc.

You can go down the list and the question you have to ask is how are these highly trained teams that need to know each and every school student intimately well enough to assess many of these issues are going to be able to sort out of the the background noise of typical and universal school angst and behavior issues in a real time basis and recognize those that are different. In reading the report, a LOT of what they talk about isn't unusual and present in a lot of the student population, yet a lot of the student population doesn't attack schools.

So basically, they are just hoping that given the vastness of vague attributes that having a team present at each school will manage to get all of the potential problematic students the help they need that will keep them from being school attackers. What I find funny about this is that a bunch of the school attackers were already getting or had gotten help with mental health issues and already had been diagnosed with mental health issues prior to their attacks (40%).

No, I don't have a solution, but I don't see what the SS is proposing is a solution issue. It is a lot of wishful thinking where they are proposing a program that they haven't actually conducted in their own area of operation.

 

[old lady new shooter]

The shortest distance from point A to point B is allowing teachers who are trained and willing, to be armed on school premises.

 

[748]

The anti bullying campaigns are more virtue signaling. They want to look Iike they are doing something with out doing anything.

They want to go full 1984 on the students and faculty but what about nut jobs like the Sandy hook shooter who just show up from beyond the scope of the threat assessment one day and start shooting?

 

[HPCadm17]

One problem I have with the article is that it describes conducting active shooter drills as a "security measure." It isn't; it's a training measure. Two distinct but equally important things.

So how about this: Active shooter drills will not prevent shootings, but it can teach people what to do and not do during a shooting. Knowing the proper action to take can increase an individual's chances of survival, which is a good thing. But we recognize that some children (some adults too) lack the cognitive ability and/or emotional maturity to handle such an intense training scenario. Send a memo home. Children identified as being at-risk would be exempted from the start. Parents should then talk with their children (what a concept!) and can then make a determination whether they believe their child can handle the training, or would likely be traumatized by it, and have the option of opting their child out.

It is common to try and institute a simplistic, one-size-fits-all solution, and in a case like this, the default one-size-fits-all solution would be to not hold the drills.

I agree with the Secret Service in that, regarding effective security measures, a threat assessment is the first and most important step. This holds true not only for schools but for any other institutions, including one's church, business, or household.

 

[jwamplerusa]

Well, if the "threat assessment" is executed, then actively subverted by policy, regulation, and incentives it really doesn't matter; does it?

Read the section in "Why Meadow died" regarding a school shooters behavior history and a school, law enforcement, and judicial system's wonderfully effective actions. (sarcasm intended)

What works is getting the deranged little ones out of the defenseless victim concentration zone, and into an appropriate location (mental institution). Continuing to force the "mainstreaming" of the dangerously mentally ill, of any age, is a slow motion societal suicide.

 

[bdickens]

The anti bullying campaigns are more virtue signaling. They want to look Iike they are doing something with out doing anything.

Yeah, exactly.

I might be showing my age here, but in my day, I used the most effective anti-bullying program in the world. Guaranteed effective with a nearly 100% success rate.

Two fists.

Back then, two kids were "allowed" to fight it out. What I mean is when you had enough of the other kid picking on you and you punched him in the nose. You went 'round & 'round until the teachers broke it up & sent you to the Principal's office. You both got sent home and when you came back, that was it.

Now, they want to call the cops.

 

[AlexanderA]

I might be showing my age here, but in my day, I used the most effective anti-bullying program in the world. Guaranteed effective with a nearly 100% success rate.

Two fists.

Back then, two kids were "allowed" to fight it out. What I mean is when you had enough of the other kid picking on you and you punched him in the nose.

I tend to agree. Kids that are obviously prepared to fight back aren't bullied. It's the weaklings, or the "odd" ones, that get picked on. This "zero tolerance" policy on fighting back paradoxically makes bullying more likely.

 

[bdickens]

Absolutely.

Schools put children in the unenviable position of being told not to fight back when they victimized - that the "authorities" (school administrators) will protect them. Which of course the administrators refuse to do.

Then, when the poor kid getting bullied tries to defend himself - as is his natural instinct - he gets in worse trouble than the bully.

If you wanted to cause children to develop anxiety and depression, that is how you would do it.

Chicago and the modern public school with it's "zero tolerance" policies are mirrors of one another.

At the risk of venturing off into politics: This is what Progressivism breeds. Read up on the history of it if you want to know what is going on. And why.

Huxley summed it up quite nicely.

Progress -- the theory that you can get something for nothing; the theory that you can gain in one field without paying for your gain in another; the theory that you alone understand the meaning of history; the theory that you know what's going to happen fifty years from now; the theory that, in the teeth of all experience, you can foresee all the consequences of your present actions; the theory that Utopia lies just ahead and that, since ideal ends justify the most abominable means, it is your privilege and duty to rob, swindle, torture, enslave and murder all those who, in your opinion (which is, by definition, infallible), obstruct the onward march to the earthly paradise. Remember that phrase of Karl Marx's: 'Force is the midwife of Progress.' He might have added -- but of course Belial didn't want to let the cat out of the bag at that early stage of the proceedings -- that Progress is the midwife of Force. Doubly the midwife, for the fact of technological progress provides people with the instruments of ever more indiscriminate destruction, while the myth of political and moral progress serves as the excuse for using those means to the very limit. I tell you, my dear sir, an undevout historian is mad. The longer you study modern history, the more evidence you find of Belial's Guiding Hand

 

[bdickens]

@Double Naught Spy:

Not to pick on you, but the reason I asked you for your solution is because it is real easy to sit around and say this or that won't work, say it is unrealistic, burdensome, too expensive or whatever. But it is something else entirety to propose an alternative.

Let's say I ask the good people here about a home security plan. I'll probably get all kinds of advice about fencing in my property, gates, cameras, motion activated lights, hardened entryways, locks, alarms, shatter resistant film on the windows, [trained] dogs and so forth.

I could complain about how expensive all that is, can't afford all that, most people can't afford all that and so on. Or I could think about I can't do all that, but what of it can I do? Which of the measures I can afford are the most effective? Where, with my limited resources, would I get the most bang for my buck?

Which response is more productive?

 

[Sistema1927]

Active shooter drills are about as effective as the "duck and cover" drills that I participated in during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was there any reason for a 2nd grader to contemplate nuclear annihilation? No, and the scarcity of school shootings means that we shouldn't traumatize an entire generation.

However, the brain washing is strong, and just as we were taught to fear the "red threat", today's kids are taught to fear firearms.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

@Double Naught Spy:

Not to pick on you, but the reason I asked you for your solution is because it is real easy to sit around and say this or that won't work, say it is unrealistic, burdensome, too expensive or whatever. But it is something else entirety to propose an alternative.

Let's say I ask the good people here about a home security plan. I'll probably get all kinds of advice about fencing in my property, gates, cameras, motion activated lights, hardened entryways, locks, alarms, shatter resistant film on the windows, [trained] dogs and so forth.

I could complain about how expensive all that is, can't afford all that, most people can't afford all that and so on. Or I could think about I can't do all that, but what of it can I do? Which of the measures I can afford are the most effective? Where, with my limited resources, would I get the most bang for my buck?

Which response is more productive?

@bdickens

Not to pick on you, but you seem really focused on non-issues of the problem. It doesn't matter if I have solution to the problem. It doesn't matter if it is easy to say something won't work. For the record, I didn't just say it won't work, but analyzed their work and their proposed solution and said why it would not work. They want highly trained teams of people at each and every school but they can't even tell the people in the highly trained teams anything other than (by their own admission) non-diagnostic traits that might be of interest to consider. Does this sound like a productive plan to you? Did you look at the information that they backtracked from previous attackers. How do you expect these highly trained teams to get information such as home life data and other non academic information from ALL of the students? Come on. Really? This sort of approach, picked up by the OP article.

Playing your productivity game, this is more realistic...Let's says you tell me that the shortest way to drive from Concord, MA to Peoria, IL is through Elko, NV and I look at your statement and realize that it is wrong and say so. Then you challenge me to tell you the shortest path, complaining that it is easy to point out shortcomings. I don't know the shortest path, but I do know that going to Elko isn't the shortest path. So what is more productive? Letting you drive the ridiculous route or pointing out that you need a better option that will give you the result you intend? There is no complaining on my part, simply pointing out that your plan isn't going to work like you think it is. I may not be progressing your goal, but pointing that your proposed route is actually keeping you from regressing your goal.

I will say it again, but the study is biased in the sense that it only looked at attacks and backtracked information from there. In no way have they looked at all the people that made threats that weren't acted upon, people who were sad that that didn't attack, bullied who didn't attack, and all the other attributes that didn't do anything wrong.

This is the sort of problem that we had with the 9/11 hijackers. People said it was an intelligence failure, and it was, but at the same time, it was an impossible problem. There was literally information about the 9/11 attackers from numerous parts of the country, held in local, state, and federal offices and virtually none of it was actually actionable in any way. There were some instances that merited further investigation, but because the suspensions were not of any known actual crimes, such investigations were sidelined due to more pressing matters needing to be dealt with by the various agencies and offices involves. Even with the FBI had related information in offices in different parts of the country, there wasn't a way to link up somewhat similar or related types of reports across the network. Never mind that there were thousands and thousands of tips of all sorts coming in to all of the agencies involved on a daily basis, supposedly more than a thousand a day into the FBI alone. That is a lot of noise to deal with.

That is the problem with the SS attributes noted. There is a lot of noise. Lots of kids are bullied. Lots of kids make threats. Lots of kids are sad. Lots of kids go through periods where their grades drop. Lots of kids change their appearance. Lots of kids have interests in weapons. Lots of kids get depressed or feel isolated. etc. etc.

Interestingly, the only things that really seem to matter is when a kid communicated a threat to harm another student that scared that student enough to report it, communicated a threat to act to a friend that scared the friend enough to report it, or made a threat against faculty that anything could be acted on in advance. That is when it became salient and actionable. The problem is that in some of the attacks, the threats were not taken seriously and they weren't taken seriously because they were just seen as bluster/bravado, like other threats kids hear where nothing ever happens. Of course, there were those school attacks where the kid was known to be trouble, had made threats, had dealt with law enforcement, had dealt with mental health folks, yet still attacked the school.

Of course, this program of having highly trained teams or overly involved teachers and administrators, mental health folks and possibly law enforcement won't do squat for the shootings that are by folks who are not students currently enrolled at the schools, right. Apparently, there have been a several of such "attacks" on schools over the years.

 

[bdickens]

Well, I'm not going to waste time arguing with someone who knows everything.

 

[film495]

used to be you heard about teen suicide as such a risk to be concerned about. don't think I've even heard it mentioned for years .. when I was in grade school we set records for suicide per captita, but no school shootings. there's always been problems, but - there was some real social shift between 85-90 IMHO that changed, and young people growing up - more and more did not have a solid sense of self and identity. just my opinion and observation .

 

[george29]

I was a school janitor (um, Custodian of mops and brooms), I loved my job, should have stayed. Whilst cleaning these factory sized schools I used to play the "What if" game. Conclusion, put sturdy locks on the doors which are already either metal or very heavy thick wood and you've halved your chances of being shot, especially if classrooms are locked and students can only be buzzed in.
Make all entrances lockable from the main office or at least put on door alarms.
Make main entrance go through the main office using multiple doors.
Weld decorative metal to the all glass fronts that permeate modern school entrances.
Now let's debate gun in the hands of teachers and administrators.
My house has numerous obstacles to get through long before I have to consider shooting someone. If I do heaven forbid have to shoot someone in my house there's no way they can claim accidental entry, one would have to scale fences or walls, get through security doors and hardened entrance doors or break burglar bars and windows, get past my alarm and pack of 7 dogs.
If only schools really had smart people in charge.
Oh, as a Bus Driver, I wasn't allowed to challenge students who might be acting strangely. So yes, dealing with student murderers is different, which means putting back metal detectors but that's not "cool".