Denial, Complacency Cited as Biggest Threats to School Safety
by Jim Brown
April 27, 2004
(AgapePress) - A school security expert says although there has been significant in school safety since the Columbine shootings five years ago, there's still some glaring gaps in security and emergency preparedness as well as in prevention measures.Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services reports there have been 43 school-associated violent deaths this year -- more than any school year since Columbine. School security consultant Ken Trump says there have also been 60 non-death shootings and more than 160 high-profile crisis and violence incidents in schools. In light of these statistics, schools, Trump says, need to do three things.
"Prepared schools train their staff on violence prevention strategies, evaluate and refine their security measures, and exercise their crisis plans in cooperation with public safety officials," he states. "Each school and each school district has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis because the problems vary [from] school to school and district to district, and the strategies that are in place vary equally as much."
Pointing out that the number of school-associated violent deaths this year is more than the last two years combined, the safety expert contends the biggest security threat is not only a kid with a gun or knife in school. Schools, he says, are most vulnerable when they are at their peak of denial and complacency.
"We are a roller coaster society -- we react based on high-profile incidents," he says. "And the real question isn't whether Columbine was a wake-up call. The real question is, five years later, did we hit the snooze button and go to sleep?"
According to Trump, time and distance breed complacency and fuel denial. "The farther we are away from a high-profile incident, the more likely we are to become complacent and to deny that it can happen here."
Trump recommends that parents make sure their children's schools not only have crisis teams and plans on paper, but that those teams meet regularly and are properly trained. School safety, he says, is ongoing process -- not a one-time event.
