NewsYork Daily Record: Safe and Sound: Experts talk about security for schoolsYork Daily Record
Safe and Sound: Experts talk about security for schools
By TED CZECH
Apr 22, 2007 — Locking down a classroom when a school is under attack and waiting for police to arrive might not be the only - or the best - option, say security experts.
Attacks at schools are a numbers game, security expert John Giduck said Wednesday. In most cases, not everyone is going to get out alive.
To preserve the largest number of lives, a school policy needs to be versatile, because not every attack is going to be the same, Giduck said.
Last week, another tragedy unfolded, this time at Virginia Tech, where a student gained access to a dormitory and a classroom building and moved from room to room, shooting 32 people.
Giduck and Chuck Burdick, another school security expert, said there was a nationwide "Columbine Effect" after the 1999 tragedy in Littleton, Colo., which drove law enforcement and school districts to change their policies.
"Maybe, as a nation, we will change our procedures post-Virginia Tech, as we did post-Columbine," Burdick said.
Modifying the lockdown
After Columbine, most schools locked all of their doors and waited for police when under attack.
Law enforcement also modified its tactics. Before Columbine, officers would surround a school and try to talk with the attackers. Now, if even one shot is heard inside the school, the first officers no longer wait for a SWAT team - they enter the school to subdue the attacker, said Giduck, a partner in the Golden, Colo.-based Archangel Group.
Even if a lockdown is employed flawlessly, "that classroom still can be jeopardized. ... Teachers have got to move their kids to areas of less vulnerability," Giduck said.
At Virginia Tech, professor Liviu Librescu saved his students by allowing them to do just that, according to what some of them said later in news reports.
Librescu, 76, a Holocaust survivor, held the door of his classroom shut as Seung-Hui Cho tried to get inside. Librescu was shot through the door, but not before all of his students jumped from the classroom's windows to safety.
"In the vast majority of the schools in this country, teachers are taught, just sit there," said Giduck, who is also a U.S. Special Forces-certified firearms and hand-to-hand combat instructor.
Greg Stough, who teaches self-defense techniques to law enforcement and owns the York Bujinkan Dojo said that, "In some ways, escaping may be the best thing. ... The longer you remain close to the danger, the greater the chance you'll receive the negative effects of it."
Working together
In a school attack, there are two spheres: what is going on inside, and what is going on outside, said Giduck.
"The most important thing is that each one knows what the other is doing," he said. "If the people inside the school are doing what law enforcement trained them to do, fewer hostages are going to die."
In June, George Edward Havens escaped from the custody of a constable in Springettsbury Township, just several hundred yards from Central York High School.
Springettsbury Township Police advised the school district to lockdown four of its schools that were near where Havens' was last seen.
"If they tell us there is a risk to the students, then the district's going to heed their warning," said Julie Romig, Central York School District spokeswoman.
Police lifted the lockdown as the high school was dismissed - about 2:50 p.m.
Romig said that, since then, the district has kept the same policy on lockdowns, however, "We review our policies routinely, every year for some, every other for others."
Jean O'Neil of the National Crime Prevention Council said, "The battle for safe schools and campuses doesn't happen when someone shows up with a gun ... It starts with good prevention strategy."
Good prevention strategy requires involving everyone - parents, teachers, administrators and students.
It's especially important to involve students, to have them take ownership for their school and those in it.
"It's really important not to leave them out of the loop as though they were accessories," O'Neil said. "Communicate to them they have a responsibility to share concerns."
Possible advances
Response Options, a Texas-based security company, advocates a "fight back" mentality when a school is under attack.
"Even with an attacker who is intent on injuring people, there exists a good chance the number of injured can be minimized if he is quickly overcome by a mass of bodies," writes Greg Crane, a former police officer, professor and co-founder of Response Options.
The program is not without critics.
"I have no problem in principle with fighting back, because if you're about to die, you have nothing to lose," Giduck said. But, he said, it's "grossly unrealistic" to expect a group of students and one teacher to react simultaneously when an armed attacker walks through the classroom door.
On the technology side, Burdick, who was emergency co-commander during the Columbine tragedy and now works for iXP, a security consultation company, talked about smart closed circuit TV. Smart CCTV involves computers, hooked up to cameras, that recognize behavior that might mean an incident is about to occur and alert the person monitoring the equipment.
For example, an alert might sound for someone putting a package down in an area where there shouldn't be any or running in an area where people don't usually run.
Burdick predicted a shift on college campuses from security forces to police departments, where officers will carry guns on duty.
This week, Harrisburg Area Community College did just that, allowing its officers to carry firearms, after the Virginia Tech shooting and a student allegedly threatening a professor at the college's Lancaster County facility. |
