School safety experts talk about emergency procedures after Minneapolis school shooting
Alison Patton
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Two students are dead and 14 are injured after a deadly school shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school on Wednesday.
This comes after several colleges across the country received fake reports of active shooters, according to a previous ABC 17 report.
Chief Operating Officer for the Missouri School Board’s Association Center for Education Safety, John McDonald, said school safety experts are trying to figure out why there’s a desire to hurt.
“We’ve never figured out that core reason behind that,” McDonald said. “It’s a desire to hurt, and that is most concerning to me because that’s a behavioral issue.”
He said schools need to prepare for “low probability, but incredibly high impact events,” like an active shooter situation.
McDonald said building a community is one of the first steps.
“When a student has relationships that are positive, they’re not shooting anybody. And then every student deserves a kind, caring, trusted adult in their life,” McDonald said.
One of the ways schools can prevent this is by monitoring student behavior.
“We’ve stopped a lot of school shootings by conducting a really good threat assessment on students engaging in behavior that is threatening,” McDonald said.
Schools can also teach students about what to do in the event of an active shooter.
McDonald also said keeping outside doors locked to prevent outsiders from coming into the school is also crucial.
When a school shooting happens, it leaves the community shocked.
John Nicoletti is a police psychologist, and he’s been on about 15 active school shooter cases in Colorado. He primarily talks to first responders affected by the traumatic event after, and sometimes before, it happens.
“A lot of stuff we work on afterwards is: these events never leave the people, you know, if you’ve gone through one, it stays with you forever,” Nicoletti said.
He said it affects the police officers going into the school; the students, teachers and staff in the building; and the parents.
“Then the other thing we try and do with people who survived it, irrespective of where they’re at, is give them a heads up on here are the things that are going to set your children off. Here are the things that are going to set you off. Here are some things to do from that standpoint,” Nicoletti.
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