School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

RESEARCH isn’t really required here, but it helps.  I stay hard-wired to the proverbial Law Enforcement Loop, so I know that in the last decade we have averaged something like 355 (active) shooting incident per year.

Okay, you’re right.  That might not add up to an AS event every day, but, far as I am concerned, it’s close enough.

Maybe I should get a little more direct here.  Yesterday, December 2, 2016,  two people, a man and a woman, dressed to the nines in combat gear and toting assault rifles and automatic handguns – how do these mentally & emotionally disturbed morons get their evil hands on this kind of high-powered killing shit, anyway? – strolled unchallenged into – of all places,  a holiday banquet at a San Bernadino (California) social services center and methodically began sweeping the area with gunfire, killing fourteen and wounding seventeen.

Although they failed to detonate, several pipe bombs had been deployed at the social service center.

This was the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. since 2012 (Newtown, Mass), and only a week after the mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood program.  Oh, yes, and a little over a week since the unspeakable ISIS terror attacks in Paris, which featured automatic weapons, handguns, explosive devices, fire, and other horrors to kill and wound hundreds!

As you may know, I posted about ISIS, Jihadis and their tendencies to select Soft Targets.  We don’t yet know if the man and woman were terrorists affiliated with ISIS (although they meet all the criteria), but, they were active shooters, to say the least.

EMPLOY THE THREE P’S TO PROTECT YOUR CAMPUS

(1)  PREVENTION.  Preventing a Paris-like attack on your campus is going to take more than just wanting to stop it.  What it will take as we move deeper into the foreign and domestic terrorism age is a genuine and dedicated effort, involving:

• Understanding Warning Signs.  Nobody can blame the good people at the San Bernadino social services center, but the warning signs were there.  They are always there.  The trick may be in a concerted effort to put the pieces of the puzzle together.  I have posted about these signs several times over the years, but some of the more outstanding ones that I saw in the most recent attacks included:  The development of personal grievances; the acquisition of weapons; escalation in target practice; a fascination with previous acts of terror (Paris, etc.) and a real or perceived personal loss.
• Other Signs That Somebody in the Family, School, and/or Community Could Report include:  paranoid ideation/depression/delusional statements/changes in personality/escalated interest in weapons, violence, target practice, explosives/suicidal ideation.
• ENHANCED TRAINING AND PRACTICE.  All schools do fire drills.  Fire Drills are the type of realistic and dynamic scenario training I believe our schools desperately need.  Only thing is, the Dynamic Simulation-Type Training (students and teachers simulate a “real” fire and practice the ideal way to respond/escape) I am talking about here must target how to respond to an active shooter.  Meaning, students and teachers would work together and practice how to either escape, hide, or even fight the terrorist when all other alternatives are exhausted.
  

(2)  PLANNING.  Serious planning must include goals, objectives, procedures with input from everyone who might be involved, including likely first responders (law enforcement)teachers; administrators, security personnel, and others in the community.  Why?  It is a fact that over 31% of warning signs include “odd”or “bizarre” behavior noticed and (not) reported by family, teachers, classmates, friends, parents, or others in the community.  Think of all the warning or pre-attack signs that could have been reported!  I don’t have the time or space in this post to go into what should be planned, but I have delved into this in previous posts.

(3)  PRACTICE (Dynamic Simulation/Scenario Training):  I believe that training and practice is the key to maximizing the safety of your staff as well as your students.  Why?

THE PERILS OF THE UNTRAINED DURING AN ACTIVE SHOOTING

My next post will feature a study on what teachers, parents, security, police, and others can expect during an Active Shooting event.  Including but not limited to what has affected shooting victims in one attack after the other:

• Unspeakable Noise, including sirens, gunfire, explosions, screams, alarms.
• Unspeakable Visions assaulting one’s senses, including pools of blood, broken bodies, people running into each other, total panic, attacker’s wearing masks and hoods, toting weapons, wearing combat gear.
• Mass and Personal Confusion, including shock, panic, fear, vision losses, inability to think, make decisions, communicate with others.  Inability to hear commands, requests, directions, etc.  Inability to hear.
• Freezing In Place.  Without training and practice (Realistic and Dynamic Simulation Training and Practice), teachers, administration, students and others will almost always experience SNS Activation (Sympathetic Nervous System) which will flood their minds and bodies with beaucoup stress hormones.  One of the immediate affects will be an inability to act (for about 2 to 3 seconds).

Until my next post – Practice For Life, Part II – Stay Safe.

Hammer

 

 

 

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