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USA Today
A New York village averted a potential school shooting. Parents are still furious.
Erin Richards
ALBION, N.Y. – The parents packed the middle school auditorium in the
evening, full of fear and anger about school safety in their village of
6,000 people.
They'd been told a school shooting plot had been thwarted and three
middle schoolers arrested. But their relief was short-lived, and their
questions for the superintendent and police chief were just beginning:
Will the students be expelled after their suspensions? Will parents be
notified if they return to school? Why are the students home with their
parents instead of locked up? How many security cameras does the school
have? Why don't we have metal detectors?
As school shootings continue to shock American families, including the
latest tragedy in Santa Clarita, California, last month, a related
trend garners less attention: numerous threats to cause mass violence
in school that are thwarted instead of carried out. School leaders say
they're getting better at assessing threats, but the steps they take
afterward to reassure parents and stabilize communities can bring their
own set of complications.
The details of averted school violence have only recently captured the
attention of researchers. Efforts to catalog patterns of how shootings
unfold may provide new insights into how future tragedies could be
prevented.
Still, that information provides little comfort to families whose
children are involved in foiled plots, either as the perpetrators or
the intended victims. For administrators, little direct guidance exists
on how to respond and communicate with families about threats to school
safety.
There's even less agreement on how to treat students convicted of
planning an attack – from the school disciplinary process to how to
integrate them back into a community.
"We are scared to send our kids to school," Kelly Brannan, an Albion
parent, said to the superintendent in the auditorium that night.
"We worry about those kids coming back and sitting next to our kids."
A plan to 'kill and injure' students and staff
"Those kids" in Albion are three teenage boys facing charges of
second-degree conspiracy to commit murder at their middle school. They
remain on suspension, at home under their parents' care, because New
York law calls for them to be placed in the least restrictive
environment that will ensure their return to court.
Albion police say the boys were in the logistical stages of a plan to
enter the school with explosives, incendiary devices and firearms.
Their goal, police say: kill and injure students and staff.
The plot, which police say was discussed on an online communication
platform called Discord, became known in early November. A student who
received a threat from another student reported it to a teacher, who
reported it to an administrator, who reported it to the district and to
the school resource officer.
A court order forbids the boys from using electronic devices, accessing
the internet, stepping on school grounds, or possessing any weapons.
They also are barred from contacting three other students listed in
court documents.
Schools across the country deal with security threats every day, but
many are not credible and do not require responses from multiple
agencies, search warrants, arrests and a seizure of (legally held)
weapons from the homes of students – as the Albion case did.
Coincidentally, the district had only recently created a formal team to
respond to school safety threats. This was the first incident to
require its attention.
"I hoped we'd never need to use it," said Albion Superintendent Michael Bonnewell.
Experts: Invest in relationships before bulletproof glass
School security experts say some of the best internal defenses schools
have against mass violence are communication, cooperation and planning.
That means having teams to assess and respond to students who could
pose a threat, processes for quickly determining which threats are
serious and plans to swiftly address any that are.
Districts should also seek to nurture trusting relationships between
students and adults, so that students feel empowered to say something
if they hear or notice something unusual, experts say.
Instead of focusing on those areas, however, many districts and states
have rushed to invest in equipment to "harden" schools against
intruders or illegal weapons, bolstering a school security industry
that's now valued at around $3 billion.
“We know that most shootings involved a failure of people, policies and
procedures, and yet schools are still investing in facial scanners,”
said Ken Trump, a nationally known school safety expert.
Studies of attempted and actual school shooters show that most people
who attempt or complete an attack are current or former students – who
likely already know how to sneak weapons into the building. Most also
discussed their plans in advance or exhibited behaviors that led to
warning signs before the planned assault, research shows.
That's why Trump stresses that schools invest in relationships with
students and in staff training over gadgets like identification systems
and bulletproof glass.
"You’re not going to notice a difference in a kid's behavior on a
Friday if you don’t know what that kid is about on Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday and Thursday," Trump added.
Outside of schools, 18 states now allow law enforcement or family
members to petition a court to temporarily remove the guns from the
home of someone they believe may harm themselves or others – measures
known as "red flag laws."
In three states – New York, California and Hawaii – school officials
can now petition the court if they believe a student poses such a
danger.
Expanded Red Flag laws:Educators are now key to thwarting school shootings
Would-be school shooters: Who they are
School shooting violence accounts for less than 1% of all gun violence
in America. That means that students are still very safe at schools,
statistically speaking.
But nobody knows exactly how many threats are made against individual
schools each year, because few if any states mandate that districts
track and publicly report the incidents and actions taken.
Ohio has a bill in the works that would require more reporting on that
issue, and Florida has a group exploring how to make that data more
public, according to the Florida Department of Education.
In the meantime, two major efforts to track averted and completed mass
school violence are creating a portrait of would-be school shooters to
help inform the debate over preventative measures.
What they show: Almost all the would-be and actual shooters were in
mental distress, with a diagnosed illness or struggling with life in
some way. Most leaked their plans in advance. Most used a weapon
obtained or stolen from a family member or friend.
Started in the aftermath of the Las Vegas concert shooting in 2017, The
Violence Project's database has tracked mass shootings of four or more
people since 1969. Since the widely publicized Columbine High School
shooting in 1999, it identified about 60 averted school shootings and
13 that were carried out.
A separate project, Averted School Violence, has tracked 139 attempted
but thwarted mass violence in schools since 1999. The tally is higher
because its database includes shootings as well as stabbings and
bombings that individuals planned to carry out on school campuses.
Averted School Violence is supported by the National Police Foundation. Law enforcement and school officials help maintain it.
Both projects are receiving federal funding from the Department of Justice.
Patterns in the databases show large, suburban high schools are the
primary targets of mass violence, and instigators are typically white,
suburban males in their teens or early 20s.
Most would-be attackers also had a precipitating life crisis within the
previous six months, according to traits examined by Averted School
Violence.
"The good news is that most shooters come from inside the school," said
Frank Straub, director of mass violence response studies at the
National Police Foundation.
"I look at that as a potential advantage because the students are there
and in contact with teachers and staff and other students, and there’s
a greater opportunity to identify people in need of intervention or
help."
Research from The Violence Project showed "virtually all" school
shooters were suicidal, said Jillian Peterson, a researcher at Hamline
University and co-founder of the effort.
She sees that as a hopeful finding because it suggests some of the same
principles for suicide prevention can be applied to preventing would-be
school shooters.
Specifically, she said, that means asking kids directly about their
plans, engaging people around them to do safety checks, and making sure
they don’t have access to weapons.
Superintendents: Should we tell parents about threats?
District leaders often struggle with how much to share with parents
about school safety threats. Disclosing too much or too little can have
negative consequences, depending on the school and the community.
Reed McCracken, a high school principal in rural Vermont, said the vast
majority of bomb threats in his school are pranks, many occurring
around exam time. He's concerned that the more attention threats
receive, the more they may occur.
"If you went around running scared all the time, you'd just be encouraging people to do it more," McCracken said.
Community concerns:Albion parents question district, police in wake of middle school attack plot
In Albion, the community meeting held at the middle school after the threat allowed parents to vent their frustrations.
Many applauded when someone suggested the district install metal
detectors to protect the district's 1,800-some students. Others
threatened to remove their children from school if the superintendent
didn't expel the accused boys.
Bonnewell, the superintendent, said he'd take the issue of metal
detectors to the school board. But many districts nationwide are
phasing the scanners out because of criticism that they've treated
students like criminals or conveyed a lack of trust.
As for expelling the students, experts say expulsions don't necessarily
guarantee a safe building in the aftermath of a threat. In fact, they
can breed a grievance.
"The most common motivation of school shooters is one of either revenge
or glory, and sometimes it's both," said Scott Poland, a psychology
professor and expert in youth suicide and violence prevention at Nova
Southeastern University.
Peterson, the researcher from The Violence Project, said districts are
under pressure from the community, media and law enforcement to come
down hard on students who make credible threats.
“But this kid is likely in crisis," she added. "If anyone is close to the edge, this could push them over.”
Parents: 'Nobody feels safe'
To many concerned parents, however, that approach feels far too lenient.
LaVertha Lynch grew up in the small town of Albion, just like her
parents did. After graduating and moving away, she returned to raise
her own children in a community she viewed as safe.
She said the accused boys should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“I feel that as a small community, we have a huge responsibility to the
rest of the nation to stand up and set the standard of zero tolerance
for violence,” Lynch said.
Ultimately, the accused boys' proceedings in family court will be
shielded, because the middle schoolers are minors. However, the town is
so small that most people know who they are, and most will likely hear
about the outcome of the judicial process.
Bonnewell said he couldn't predict the outcome of their school disciplinary hearings.
Lynch said she doesn't know what words to use to reassure her children.
"Nobody feels safe or secure," she said. "We don't know what to do."
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