What is going to take?

October 28, 2008 | by Steve | Permalink | Trackback


Recently, Dave and I attended a seminar presented by Lt. Col Dave Grossman. The subject matter dealt with child school shootings and child murderers. His one prediction… these children will grow and attend college.

Sunday, there was another college shooting.  Two students at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas were fatally shot, and one individual wounded.

Dave Grossman strikes me as the new renaissance man. Part warrior, part poet, family man. He served as a “ground pounder” and later as a Airborne Ranger officer. He an author of many books, teaches for the FBI, the U.S. Army and been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is considered the pre-eminent authority in his field.His topics: human aggression, violence and murder.

His ideas and how to stop this terrible plague are straightforward - protect our students and take away the causation.

The analogy he uses is very simple. In the late 1950’s a fire in a school killed several children. The public was outraged. Substantial changes throughout the nation were made. Since that time not one child has died in a school fire.

Schools now have fire alarms, sprinklers, fire drills… we teach a 3 year old to stop… drop… and roll.

However, when there is violence we don’t have many safeguards in place.

CBS News has an interactive image of US School Shootings:

US School Shootings

In today’s reality, we need to teach students and teachers how to be safe.

Here are some ideas presented by Lt. Col Grossman:

Preparation does not cause anxiety..denial does..denial has no survivabilty.

Deter…have a single point of entry..lock classrooms. Perform lock down drills.

Detect..be aware of pre-incident indicators such as phone calls regarding security.

Delay ..lock down the facility to allow help to arrive. If you expect your security personnel to face armed intruders..arm and properly train your security. Teach a foundational response.. teach survivor behavior.

Perform move drills:

move away from the threat

move to a safe location

NEVER evacuate on a phone call alone. In North America, not one bomb threat phoned to a school has been a real device.

move again if you have good information or intelligence.

Lt.Col Grossman is a professor of psychology at West Point.  His books are based on research and sound medicine. His ideas not radical, but common sense. His idea of the causation, I’ll leave to him.

His presentations are not filled with techno bells and whistles (he still uses an overhead projector). His message is personal. His family was involved in one of the events.

Take a look at his web site, killology.com/ or look for his books (there are several).

It’s worth your time.

Let’s make this stop.



Posted by Steve on October 28, 2008 | Permalink & Trackback