Secret Service Report: Averting School Violence

After the school shooting at Appalachee High School in Georgia, the discussion proceeds as it does after every school shooting.  Both sides make their predictable political arguments, and it isn’t clear that anyone really cares.  The corporate media encourages a therapeutic response, without providing much actual information.  The Secret Service studies these things, but their reports aren’t mentioned much. 

After the assassination attempt against Trump, it’s clear that the Secret Service is polluted with diversity hires who have lost sight of their core mission.  It may be naive to think that this report is compiled by competent people, but it’s probably the best analysis we have.

Several corporate media sites, including NPR and the New York Times, reference this report, but paraphrase, omit and supplement to support their partisan objectives.  For anyone interested in actually being informed, it’s worth going to the source.  For a big report like this, at least read the “Executive Summary” to get the big ideas.  Read the rest of the report to see that the summary accurately reflects the analysis.  Political spin is most likely to occur in the Executive Summary.

From the Executive Summary:

It should be noted clearly in any school threat assessment policy that the primary objective of a student threat assessment is not to administer discipline or to introduce students into the criminal justice system.

This doesn’t make sense.  “Primary Objective” means the main goal of a policy and establishes the criteria by which the policy will be evaluated.  The primary objective should be to prevent injury or death from a student with criminal intent. 

The Key Findings and Implications were:

  • Targeted school violence is preventable when communities identify warning signs and intervene.
  • Schools should seek to intervene with students before their behavior warrants legal consequences.
  • Students were most often motivated to plan a school attack because of a grievance with classmates.
  • Students are best positioned to identify and report concerning behaviors displayed by their classmates.
  • The role of parents and families in recognizing concerning behavior is critical to prevention.
  • School resource officers (SROs) play an important role in school violence prevention.
  • Removing a student from school does not eliminate the risk they might pose to themselves or others.
  • Students displaying an interest in violent or hate-filled topics should elicit immediate assessment and intervention.
  • Many school attack plots were associated with certain dates, particularly in the month of April.
  • Many of the student plotters had access to weapons, including unimpeded access to firearms.

A primary finding was that the student provides plenty of warning.  In most school shootings, the student was a concern well in advance of taking action.   In the Appalachee shooting, law enforcement had talked to the shooter a year ago as a response to troubling comments posted online.  The day of the shooting, the shooter’s mother called the school a half-hour before to say that she was concerned about her son.

The SRO plays an important role.  At North Royalton, our SRO was an experienced police officer who was also a law enforcement instructor and had been deployed overseas in a peacekeeping mission.  There are too many ways that he helped out the school.  It was a great loss when he retired.  He was replaced by a young police officer who didn’t have the training or temperament to be successful.  In the Appalachee shooting, when the SRO confronted the shooter, he surrendered.

In the bullet points, notice that there is no mention of banning guns, long guns, assault weapons or otherwise interfering with the rights of responsible gun owners.  No responsible gun owner would allow school children to have unimpeded access to firearms.

It’s worth reading the entire report to understand the methodology and scope of the report.  The limits of the analysis should be explicit.

To be included in this study, incidents had to involve plots to conduct a school attack that were averted in the United States from 2006 to 2018.

That is a hard limit.  This study only looks at attacks that did not happen. 

This study does not include plots in which the individuals sought to carry out an attack related to gang violence, drug violence, or other incidents with a strong suggestion of a separate criminal nexus.

A frequent complaint about school shooting data is the definition of terms.  A study should clearly establish what constitutes a school shooting.  The corporate media usually omits the subtleties.

Researchers obtained information for the 67 identified averted attacks through a rigorous, structured review of open source information, including news articles and reports from government and private agencies.

“Open source” means the researchers only looked at publicly available information.  The researchers did not talk to counselors, SRO’s or parents.  The researchers recognize the limits.

In some cases, very little information was found about the case. The majority of media coverage of these averted attacks focused on the details of the plots; often, very little was provided on the plotters’ backgrounds.

This suggests that the researchers are competent people, but the Secret Service is putting too much emphasis on this limited report.  Only 67 incidents were included in the study.

With the limits understood and the researchers seeming to be competent, there are interesting results in the study.

The motive was most often a grievance with other students.  That was the case in 31% of the incidence, with perceived bullying being a motive 21% of the time.  Corporate media puts it all on bullying, but 21% isn’t that many.

In 15% of the cases, the person just wanted to kill people.  In almost as many cases (13%), the plotter just wanted to commit suicide.  With notoriety coming in at 12%.  A potential criminal could have several motives.

Weapons-related planning comes up in 85% of the cases.  This is where friends, family and the community can observe a developing problem.

In most cases, the plotter intended to use two types of weapons.  In 96% of the cases, a firearm was one type.

In 64% of the cases, the plotters had access to firearms.  The report is clear that ‘access’ meant a firearm was in the home.  The firearm may or may not be locked in a safe.

In 42% of the cases, the plotter had unimpeded access to a firearm.  They stole one, legally bought one, or had access to the gun safe.

The report is limited, but interesting.  Gun control isn’t the issue, but all responsible gun owners must keep their firearms secure.  Students with criminal intent have a variety of other weapons available.  I don’t think schools can handle this issue alone.  Schools may be able to tip off the police, but the police have to handle it from there.