School Safety: To Plan, or Not to Plan.........

HB 1168, a bill that would have forced schools to allow campus carry has died in committee on a bipartisan vote of 7-4.

Whether one believes gun free zones should be eliminated or not, there is at least one large law firm advocating that businesses post no guns allowed signs from a liability perspective. This could be applied to schools, as well.

Concealed And Open Carry Exposes Commercial And Residential Building Owners To Massive Financial Risk--Top Law Firm

If this law firm believes a corporation should be responsible if a legal concealed carry person has a "mishap" we should just pass a law that says they aren't responsible. What a ridiculous claim by a sue happy law firm. Of course they would like one other way to sue.

If they believe the firm should be responsible for concealed carry people, why not make them responsible if a criminal comes into a "no guns allowed" store, and kills customers or employees? Same logic would apply. By posting a no guns allowed sign, they should reasonably assume that bad guys will know they can kill/rob at will, and should be liable.

The answer is reforming lawsuits, not making more reasons to sue people for things they aren't responsible for.

It's really going to be interesting to see how this ruling plays out in how online threats are handled by schools from now on.

SCOTUS and free speech: www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/...07/?csp=breakingnews

There's a new law in Colorado that was just signed by our governor that allows parents who've lost children in school shootings or had children injured in school shootings to sue those schools where it happens for negligence. The reaction has been mixed, but most of the reaction has been negative.

I'm posting screen captures of some of the reactions on one news channel's FB page to help give an idea of what this is all about in people's eyes:

I hope everyone can read these comments. They are very telling. My response:

I don't mean to be a Devil's advocate here, but there's something strangely missing from the headline of this story. Parents aren't suing any schools for "up to $350,000 per victim or $900,000 per incident". Rather, they are suing for negligence. The monetary awards are not something parents who've lost children or had their children injured in these types of incidents are looking for. Monetary awards are granted only if a school is found to be negligent. We can blame the "sue happy" society here in the U.S. all we want to, but the fact remains schools are required, by law no less, to provide a "standard of care" for our children when in their school's specific purview. The problem with a "standard of care" is that it is subjective in nature. This new law may (please note I said MAY, not WILL) help motivate schools to be in compliance with applicable laws some now say they don't have adequate resources in order to be in compliance with (SB 08-181 to be specific).

Click on the text below to read the full article and watch the video which actually goes into a little more detail on this law.
Colorado schools liable for violence under new law named for school shooting victim Claire Davis

On threat assessments:

Schools need to do threat assessments. If they don't know how, or if they don't know where to start, this article, Enhancing Campus Safety with a Threat Assessment Program , gives some very prudent advice.

Saw this story this morning: NC sheriff: Suspects said they would have shot children if 'God's will'

Two things come immediately to mind here:

1. The bus driver who confronted the suspects (can't quite call them perps just yet) is lucky, from what I read, to even be alive to tell their story. In instances like these, school personnel (this time the bus driver) actually become 1st responders. Their training should include being able to do a simple threat assessment of their own at the scene. Obviously, the two suspects were armed. Likewise, there were no children yet present. The threat assessment should have told them to call it in immediately instead of confronting two obviously armed individuals. If there had been children present, the threat assessment done by the bus driver would more than likely have required a different response, but, thankfully, there were no children present. While heroic to some, this bus driver could just have easily have become a victim.

2. The evacuation process, from what I read, caused some confusion and anxiety for parents. In fact, my interpretation of what happened leads me to believe the children weren't evacuated at all. Rather, they arrived after the fact in which case their buses were simply re-routed to a nearby church. At that point, the entire incident should have revolved around reunification.

From the article:

**** Children were bused to a nearby church while deputies investigated.

Holland said no one but law enforcement officers, school employees and students were allowed onto the church property. Parents were not allowed to pick-up, drop-off or go onto the property with the children, causing several parents to get upset.

“Our priority was not to ease parents' minds but to keep all those children safe at the time, and their safety was maintained,” Holland said. ****

While keeping all those children safe at the time is commendable, it's also kind of a faux pax, really, from a public information perspective. A simple procedure to provide public information to parents, some of whom were arguably frantic, could have gone a long way toward allaying their fears and concerns.

Reunification procedures are of paramount importance after an incident occurs. I'm not even sure why LE did what they did since their investigation appeared to take place as children arrived for the school day. In this instance, it may just have been better to re-route all the buses to another location (the church) with a simple, repetitive notification from the school or a designated Public Information Officer instructing parents on how to be reunified with their children. To shelter them in a nearby church the way they did and to not allow parents access to their kids (or have procedures in place to do so) kind of puzzles me.

Makes me wonder if The I Love U Guys Foundation Standard Response Protocols might have gone a long way to helping in this response? Methinks more than likely they would have.

There's a whole lot more than this at play here, though --- all of which could be the subject of another discussion entirely. Care to join in?

My two cents.

This is a very short 3 minute video clip of the failure of Teton Dam in Idaho back in 1976. There's a whole bunch more information available on this dam failure if you simply do a search of the name of the dam. The focus of this post, however is on the timeline leading up to the failure. I'd also like to ask viewers to pay attention to some of the audio warnings and what was said in those warnings to those living downstream from this structure.

The reason I'm sharing this is twofold:

1. While I wasn't working for the agency that owned and operated this dam at the time of its failure, I did work for them starting in 1990 in the field of emergency management as it applies to dam safety. So this story has special significance for me.
2. Recent rains here in Colorado prompted rumors about dams failing that were unfounded. Those rumors got me thinking on how dam safety and school safety have way more in common than one might think. That's just one of many reasons why we've developed that portion of our website, The PEACE Challenge , that specifically deals with school safety and how to access available resources to help make them the safe environments for our kids that they should be.


In other words:

The simple reality is that dam failures are a very rare event. So are mass shootings in schools. The problem, though, is that both events have extremely high consequences if, or when, they do occur.

There is a "standard of care" required in both instances. The difference is the standard of care for a dam is the responsibility of the owner and operator of the structure while the standard of care for children in schools is borne by the administration of that school.

When incidents develop for each of these scenarios, they usually develop over a period of time. Dams don't just burst suddenly. That's simply a myth. Likewise, events at schools are usually preceded by warning signs, red flags if you will, leading up to someone wrecking havoc on a vulnerable demographic.

Sometimes, dams don't even come close to failing while still causing damage downstream. Likewise, degrees of magnitude in school events are dictated by how far the situation is "allowed" to progress beforehand (intervention as one example).

Those who own and operate dams are required by law to develop what are called emergency action plans. Those plans are supposed to detail specific thresholds that demand specific actions should those thresholds be met. Same thing with schools. They are required by law to develop emergency response plans to do the same thing when certain thresholds are met. These thresholds for both categories are part and parcel of a viable threat assessment those providing that standard of care are supposed to conduct as conditions dictate.

The problem in both instances is that plans are usually developed with the sole intent of getting them done. Then they're placed on a shelf to collect dust, and are usually not dusted off until something happens. Then it's too late for them to be effective when they are needed the most. And that, folks, is why a robust full spectrum emergency management program was developed (patting myself on the back here a little bit because I was a principle author of the guidelines for that purpose at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) for the agency responsible for the failure of Teton Dam. It didn't happen until after the fact, but it did happen. The engineers I worked with had kind of a mantra before this failure ---- our dams don't fail. Many schools and communities have a mantra, too ---- it can't happen here. Neither are true, and unless people understand and accept that fact, these events will continue to occur and the handwringing and lamentations will keep on keeping on.

I'm not going to belabor this point further right now. I hope a comparison like this one might help people understand a little better how these things work, or how they are supposed to work at the very least.

My two cents.

This article spells it out quite well, in my opinion. Following just about every single tragedy at a school, mass shooting or otherwise, the rush to purchase and install physical remedies is pretty much rampant. Far too often, those responsible for providing a "standard of care" for those IN their care view these types of things as a panacea of sorts without due consideration being given to those pesky "laws of unintended consequences".

Please don't get me wrong here. Hardware has its place in providing for safer schools. All I'm trying to do is to point out there are risks associated with reliance on hardware as the primary, if not sometimes also the sole, recourse in providing for safer schools.

And, for the record, no matter how one feels about our "sue happy" society, reality should dictate that school administrators take their "standard of care" very seriously, no matter how nebulous it might be, and act accordingly. Planning for these types of events doesn't let anyone off the hook when they occur if planning means purchase and installation of hardware is the only thing that's been done.

Here's one of those what I call "panacea" hardware solutions to active shooters that appears not to have addressed several planning issues, not the least of which is a "false alarm rate" and cost.

California School Adopts Gunfire Detection, Alert Solution to Improve Safety