There is a reason FEMA started its guidelines with prevention and mitigation! This is the space we all want to be in. It is infinitely better to prevent a tragedy from occurring than to wait for it to happen and then respond to it. In a society where we wait for things to happen before we respond, it challenges us to act long before tragedy strikes. That being said, this is precisely what we need to do to remain in the prevention space.
Understanding and recognizing minor crises in individuals is critical to remaining in the prevention space. Again, looking at the “Left of Bang” timeline, we want to bring our initial responses to incidents long before a triggering event. This holds true for all events, not just those involving violence. By addressing minor incidents and understanding their long-term effects, we can connect them to significant incident prevention years from now. For example, you have likely read my account of one of my favorite examples of early prevention—the story of the first and fourth graders. Several years ago, I was the Safety Director for a school district in Southern California. One day, I got a call from an elementary school principal. She asked me to help her with an incident involving a first grader threatening to kill a fourth grader. The short version of the story is that the first grader was playing kickball with her friends. They kicked their ball into a group of fourth graders during the game. The fourth graders were upset with the first graders, so they took their ball and refused to return it to them. One of the first graders went to retrieve their ball, but the fourth grader still refused to hand over the ball. After some time, the first grader finally said, “If you don’t give me our ball, I am going to kill you!” The fourth graders reported the threat to the teacher; the rest is history. What do you think I told the principal to do?
Before I tell you what we did, let me first talk about the need to understand the Cycle of Violence, the Pathway to Violence, and the number one reason active shooters give for committing acts of violence. The Cycle of Violence identifies acts of violence as a learned behavior. Since bullying is an act or threat of violence, bullying is part of the Cycle of Violence. For us to stop violence, we have to break that cycle. The Pathway to Violence identifies seven categorical steps active shooters take before they commit acts of violence: victimization, grievance, violent ideation, research and planning, attack preparation, probing and breaching, and the attack. Conducting a threat assessment allows us to identify if someone poses a threat to our school, students, or staff. If we can place someone on the Pathway to Violence, depending on where they land, we can determine the threat level they pose. Finally, the number one reason active shooters give for acts of violence is they committed. The majority of the active shooters who were interviewed stated they were bullied relentlessly during their school years. Look at the Cycle of Violence being a learned behavior, the first step on the Pathway to violence, and the number one reason stated for acts of violence against schools. You can reasonably conclude that active shooters learned their behavior by being victimized by a bully as a young child, the first step on the Pathway to Violence. Then they turn into the bully. After all, an active shooter incident is the ultimate act of bullying.
Now, what did we do with my example? Looking at the totality of what happened, the first grader kicked the ball into the group of fourth graders. The fourth graders got angry and refused to give the first graders their ball back. They did this from a position of power. The group of fourth graders was larger in numbers and size. They were essentially bullying the first graders by refusing to give them back the ball, which was rightfully theirs. They were exerting their power over the first graders. However, the first grader who went to retrieve the ball called their bluff and threatened to kill the fourth grader to shift the power to her side. So, what you end up with is there are two victims of being bullied and two kids bullying each other. So, I instructed the principal to conduct a threat assessment on both the first and fourth graders. While none of us thought there would be any acts of violence, this forced the principal to look at all the facts in this incident and take appropriate action with both girls. If the principal had only addressed the threats made by the first grader, the principal would have reinforced the behaviors of the fourth grader, and those behaviors would have likely continued. As far as I know, there have been no further incidents with either student.
This example showed how addressing these small concerning incidents can likely prevent larger acts of violence in the future. We know that acts of violence in our schools are on the increase, and we also know those acts are rarely spontaneous. They started as acts of bullying when they were much younger. Then, as those acts of bullying occur over many years, they feel there is no other way out of their situation, and they resort to violence as their solution. If you look back at the past several active shooter incidents in our nation, we can point to several missed opportunities for intervention. Of the many identified opportunities that were missed, I bet you there were likely hundreds of unidentified opportunities to intervene. While we are pointing fingers at this agency or that agency, maybe we should be looking at the opportunities we missed. There should never be a situation where a witness to one of these tragedies is interviewed on the news and says, “I wasn’t surprised that he did that!” By connecting the small incidents early, we can break the cycle of Violence, prevent our children from taking the Pathway to Violence, and prevent them from becoming the next one.
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