GREENFIELD — Talks of how to improve school safety have not taken a summer vacation.
Teachers and principals, the police officers entrusted to protect students at school and the state leaders tasked with doling out dollars to improve security have come together on several occasions this summer to discuss how best to keep kids safe in the coming school year.
These talks, they say, will only continue because preparation is the best way to arm themselves against the unthinkable.
Last week, the Fortville Police Department invited representatives from schools, police and fire departments from across the region to attend a workshop with The “I Love U Guys” Foundation, which specializes in crisis-response training for schools and first-responders.
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In mid-June, Greenfield-Central Schools brought together district leaders and representatives from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, Greenfield Police Department, probation and prosecutor’s office and Emergency 911 Center for a talk about improvements to security and staff safety training.
The state announced recently it’s given Hancock County school districts more than $200,000 collectively to bulk up their buildings’ security, in addition to an offer to provide free handheld metal detectors to any school that asks for the devices. The funding will go to pay school resource officers for their building patrols and upgrade security camera software, district officials say. Each school system is considering plans to apply for handheld metal detectors, representatives say.
Greenfield-Central Superintendent Harold Olin and leaders of more than 21 school districts across Central Indiana came together for a round-table discussion on school safety, where they shared ideas and talked about changes each corporation plans to implement for the 2018-19 school year.
Soon, Olin and members of the Greenfield-Central school board, along with a few teachers and principals, will tour Southwestern Shelby County Schools, which is located about 30 miles south of Greenfield and has been referred to as the safest school district in America.
And amid the questions, the FBI released a report the agency hopes will bolster discussions on school safety and better inform “safety stakeholders.” The study looked at the “pre-attack behavior” of a decades’ worth of school shooters, and shows that those closest to the attacker — include friends, family and teachers — are the most likely to spot concerning character traits, but the least likely to report them to police out of concern for the shooter.
“The prevention of these attacks will depend on our ability to remain agile and recognize evolving pre-attack behaviors,” the study states in its conclusion.
Olin likened the summer full of training, roundtables, tours, discussions and digestion of studies to a “school security quest” in a memo given to his school board.
It’s a mission districts across the state seem to be on, as the fear of tragedy weighs heavily on the minds of all community members.
Local law enforcement put a face to that tragedy when John-Michael Keyes of The “I Love U Guys” Foundation came to Fortville Friday.
Keyes’ daughter, Emily, was taken hostage and killed by a gunman inside her Colorado high school in 2006. Before she died, she was able to send text messages to her parents that read “I love you guys” and “I love u guys. k?”
In their grief, out of a desire to help others, Emily’s family started The “I Love U Guys” Foundation in 2009 with the mission of offering free training to police and school district leaders on threat-response protocols or family reunification.
Keyes came to Hancock County at the request of Fortville Police Chief Bill Knauer and leaders of the Mt. Vernon Schools district.
Officers from every law enforcement agency in the county attended Friday’s event and can now go on to train the other members of their departments. For Fortville, that’ll include talking with parents, teachers and students on what to expect should a shooting ever happen locally, Knauer said.
“A lack of conversation hurts,” Knauer said. “We’ve got to be able to sit down and talk about it.
“People don’t want to talk about the bad stuff. But I think if we prepare ahead of time and we communicate these things with people, things are going to go a lot easier.”
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As school-safety discussions continue, officials say they’ll keep encouraging their students and teachers to report any instances where a person exhibits concerning behavior, all in the hope of preventing an act of violence locally.
Last month, the FBI released the findings of its study of the pre-attack behavior of 63 individuals who carried out mass shootings between 2000 and 2013. Investigators used only police reports that contained information about a shooter’s behavior before an attack to conduct its examination.
Key findings of the study included: only a fourth of active shooters suffered from a diagnosed mental illness, and of those only three were diagnosed with a psychotic disorder; the majority of the shooters had obtained a firearm legally; and none of the attackers “could be readily identified prior to attacking based on demographics alone.”
The report states that, on average, shooters displayed four or five “concerning behaviors” prior to the attack and were experiencing multiple stressors.
For shooters under that age of 18, peers and teachers are most likely to spot concerning behaviors; family members are most likely to observe concerning behaviors adult shooters.
And while the concerning behavior is recognized, it was reported to police only 41 percent of the time, the study found. More often, someone who noticed concerning behaviors talked directly with the shooter about it (83 percent of the time) or did nothing (54 percent of the time).
Stressors are defined as “physical, psychological or social forces that place real or perceived demands/pressures on an individual and which may cause … distress.”
These include:
- Abuse of illicit drugs or alcohol
- Conflict with friends, family or others
- Legal problems
- Death of a friend or relative
- Financial strain
- Physical injury
Concerning behaviors are “observable behaviors” and include:
- Lack of sleep
- Anger and aggression
- Changes in weight, eating habits or hygiene
- Lack of communication
- Increased risk-taking and impulsivity
- Violent media usage and inappropriate firearms behavior
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