Schools Are Calling Police More – And They Need To

The following opinion was submitted by Newtown Patch reader Don Mihalek of Newtown.

A recent Patch article titled "PA Schools Calling Police At Record Rate: See Complete Breakdown" lays out statistics that indicate that school districts across Pennsylvania appear to be calling the police more than ever – and there are reasons why.

School attacks across the nation have increased dramatically since the Columbine attacks, which were just commemorated less than a month ago. (Washington Post article)

According to the Washington Post, there were more school shootings in 2022 – 46- than in any other year since 1999. In total, 404 school shootings have been documented since Columbine, which includes the high-profile shootings and murders at Newtown Elementary in Connecticut, Parkland in Florida and of course the disastrous Uvalde shooting in Texas. What the statistics also show is that gun violence, which is separate and distinct from a school attack, is more prevalent than ever in our schools.

Gun Violence can loosely be defined as gang or criminal-type violence at a school. A school attack is an act of targeted violence, which is when a suspect targets the school causing a mass casualty incident as defined by Congress in 2013 in the Investigative Assistance to Violent Crimes Act (H.R.2076 - Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012) as causing 3 or more deaths. (Mass Shootings In the United States).

While there are distinctions between both types of school violence, the commonality of increasing violence being perpetrated in our schools is a sad fact. Even in Bucks County, fights in Pennsbury School District led to a lockdown while a student in Bensalem was recently charged when they “air dropped’ a photo of a gun in a backpack to other students (Bensalem Student Will Be Charged With Gun Photo Threat: Police).

Why is this happening? If you were to ask the US Surgeon General, he points a finger at social media as a culprit (Surgeon General Issues New Advisory About Effects Social Media Use Has on Youth Mental Health). “Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address.”

The report goes on to say that, “64 percent of adolescents are “often” or “sometimes” exposed to hate-based content through social media. Studies have also shown a relationship between social media use and poor sleep quality, reduced sleep duration, sleep difficulties, and depression among youth.”

So, while social media is a driver of negativity in children’s lives, “Social media use by young people is nearly universal, with up to 95 percent of young people ages 13-17 reporting using a social media platform and more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”

And that negativity and conduct comes into schools, every single day, as the Surgeon General stated in the form of bullying, hate speech, violent content, sexualized content and worse. What happens on a phone, in a chat room or on a text router most certainly follows students into school and in some cases, everywhere they go.

And schools, that are supposed to be educational institutions who run classes from 7 a.m. ish to 4 p.m. ish, are now having to grapple with the collateral damage that social media and other forms of online harassment and activities are often cascading in or being acted out in schools.

PA Safe to Say tip line (Safe to Stay website), which allows students and others an anonymous way to report conduct, shows that bullying/cyberbullying is reported more than double that of the next largest report, smoking (Safe To Say Annual Report). The report also indicates that the majority of Safe to Say reports are via mobile browser (aka: cell phones).

To combat this, Pennsylvania enacted a groundbreaking piece of legislation in in 2019 which amended the Public School Code of 1949 and added a mandate for schools to create and administer Threat Assessment teams among all school entities in 2021-2022 school year. (Pennsylvania School Assessment Threat)

That time frame slipped, in part due to the COVID aftermath, but over the last few years, the state rolled out the training programs and requirements for schools to formalize and establish threat assessment teams. (K-12 Threat Assessment Training) This requirement was an idea borrowed from the US Secret Service, an agency tasked with not only protecting our leaders but also, after the 2013 law, had a formalized role with helping to protect schools.

The behavioral threat assessment process is what the Secret Service has used for decades to identify, track and mitigate threats to its protectees - so it was a perfect fit for helping with school threats. (U.S. Secret Service Enhancing School Safety).

Of the research the Secret Service has conducted on school violence, some of the pivotal findings in its (New Secret Service Report Analyzes Averted Attacks) report: Averting Targeted School Violence: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Plots Against Schools were 1) Targeted school violence is preventable, if communities can identify warning signs and intervene. 2) Schools should seek to intervene with students before their behavior warrants legal consequences and 3) School resource officers (SROs) play an important role in school violence prevention and 4) Students displaying an interest in violent or hate-filled topics should elicit immediate assessment and intervention.

To avert these acts of “targeted violence,” the formation of threat assessment teams must include expertise from the schools, the mental health community, counseling and law enforcement or as the Secret Service says, “Team should include personnel from a variety of disciplines…the multidisciplinary nature of the Team ensures that varying points of view will be represented and that access to information and resources will be broad.” (An Operational Guide forPreventing Targeted School Violence)

This combined expertise allows a “team” to look at the reported behavior of a student and identify if they are on a path to violence and institute ways to mitigate it, before it becomes actionable. Often, referrals to mental health or counseling teams is the first step. Law enforcement participation gives them visibility of the issues and also brings in any outside conduct that may help inform the team on a student’s conduct, which is in line with the behavioral threat assessment process.

And it’s a process that schools, like in Parkland with their school murderer who had dozens of police contacts (NPR: Parkland Shooting Suspect: A Story Of Red Flags, Ignored) outside of school and the Oxford school murderer who exhibited multiple warning signs while in school (New evidence alleges Ethan Crumbley exhibited more warning signs ahead of school shooting), had used, could have mitigated those evolving threats.

So while it seems that schools are reporting to the police “more than ever” they in fact have to and should, considering where acts often formulate – online and at home. Using the proven behavioral threat assessment process can and will only do one thing – help make schools safer.