New Protocols in School Security Are a Must Following Sandy Hook Tragedy
By Ilana Freedman
The tragedy that occurred at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday brought into sharp relief how much we still have to learn about school security. And it's time to talk about it.
After 9/11, the words “terrorism” and “schools” were hardly spoken in combination. The example wasset by the US Department of Education. Following the Beslan school disaster in Russia in which 186 children and 148 adults were brutally murdered by Chechen terrorists, the DOE sent a letter to school administrators throughout the US. The letter was meant to reassure educators that such a deadly attack was unlikely to happen in any school here, but there was not a single word in it about terrorism. Educators were happy to take the hint and the closest many would come to the issue was to talk about “school violence”. An important, potentially life-saving opportunity was missed.
Friday's massacre in Newtown brought us abruptly back to reality and the need to talk frankly about school security. I have been a specialist in counter-terrorism for over twenty-five years and since 9/11 have had the opportunity to observe and assist schools wanting to improve their security. Lessons learned from this process are clear and important. Here are just a few:
1) When trying to deal with the potential murder of school children, political correctness has no place in the conversation. In the real world and in the world of law enforcement and counter-terrorism, the response to such an event is the same, whether you call it “school violence” or “terrorism”. Terrorism is the correct word and the response should be fast, firm, and final.
2) In today's politically correct world, we coddle our children. Every child is entitled to be a winner so at the end of the game, every child gets a prize. But real life isn't like that and the lessons we teach our children today don't begin to prepare them for a very different reality when they grow up. In fact, coddling our children disempowers them, because it shields them from the life lessons they need to learn that will prepare them for the real world.
Even at a very young age, children can be taught that life is not always safe. They can learn how to keep themselves safer. In the 1950s, all school children were required to participate in air raid drills. They were told that the Soviet Union might attack us with what was then called an “atomic bomb”. Even the youngest children learned to “duck and cover” and were drilled in this regularly. Like a fire drill, it wasn't scary, it was more like a game. But it helped children prepare for truly terrible events in a way that made them feel empowered and safer.
The key is empowerment. One of the many stories of heroism that came out of Sandy Hook was of one small boy who, in the midst of all the fear and chaos, led his classmates to safety when his teacher was unable to. He was young enough to be given a pass, but old enough not to take it. Instead of being a victim, he became a hero.
Educators need to take a hard look at what even the youngest children are truly capable of understanding. The levels of personal responsibility that they are able and willing to take are truly amazing. By developing drills for active violence as well as fire, children can learn skills that will teach them how to behave in the way most likely to keep them safe, during and after an attack, should one ever occur. It may one day save their lives.
3) An area of human behavior that has been talked about a great deal, but about which little has been done, is how to spot a potential “terrorist” before he is able to kill. There have been many cases where concerns have been recorded, but local, state, or federal law has prevented school authorities from reporting it.
Among them were Seung-Hui Cho, the killer of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in 2006, and James Holmes, the movie theater killer in Aurora, Colorado earlier this year, both of whom showed a host of warnings which went unheeded. Old laws that honor political correctness more than community safety need to be carefully rewritten to protect the population at large, while still maintaining Constitutional integrity. The need to spot a potential threat to the community cannot be overestimated, and sound solutions must be found that not only protect the community but may also help the individual concerned, and keep him from becoming a future threat.
4) One of the key problems of physical school security today is that it is usually designed by security experts who specialize in theft and intrusion detection. The issues which they solve do not generally relate to situations in which the intruder has no intention of leaving the building alive.
This is a kind of terrorism with which most security experts have little if any experience. The psychology of a terrorist with a gun, knife, or bomb, who intends to kill as many people as possible, is very different from that of one who just wants to steal or do mischief, and then leave the building without getting caught. The security solutions are very different.
Among the most important issues, when designing security systems to protect against school violence and terrorism, is identifying and closing the vulnerabilities that will enable a terrorist to gain entry to the school.
The Sandy Hook School tried to get it right. They had just invested in a new security system with an entry screening pprotocol that they thought would protect their students in the worst case scenario. Then the worst case happened. And their system was not good enough.
Although we are still missing a great deal of information about the events of Friday morning, it appears that the single point of failure may have been the screened point-of-entry to the school. As good as it was, their new security system did not seem to take into account a forced and armed entry.
There is no perfect system that will secure a school completely, but the key is to alert the staff as early as possible. Clear protocols and an automatic alarm system can give the staff valuable minutes to protect the children and themselves. Even a few extra minutes of warning can make the difference between life and death.
5) A security system is only as good as the people who are trained to use it. All staff must have this training, once a system is installed, including substitute teachers, maintenance staff, and the administration. The instructions must be clear and easy to follow in an emergency when every minute may be critical.
In short, the key is to treat school security as a counter-terrorism issue. Ironically, the counter-terrorism approach to school security is frequently less expensive than traditional approaches, since it is focused on specific security issues, such as single-point-of-failure and the psychology of a perpetrator who does not intend to escape.
So long as we consider school violence to be something less than a terrorist attack, our solutions, no matter how comprehensive or how expensive, are likely to fall short in the event of a real attack. As unlikely as such an attack may be for any particular school, one of the lessons of Sandy Hook should be that in the real world, it can happen anywhere.
There is nothing more precious than our children. We now need to better protect them with all the knowledge we can bring to bear to keep them safe. That means calling 'school violence' what it really is, a form of 'domestic terrorism', and doing everything necessary to protect our children from it.
Ilana Freedman has been a counter-terrorism specialist and intelligence analyst for over 25 years. Trained in Israel, she has provided security support to schools throughout the US. To send comments or questions, please e-mail ilana@gerarddirect.com
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 07:55AM 