Preschool Preparedness for an Active Shooter

Andrew Roszak

• Publisher: Gryphon House Inc.
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780876598351
• eBook ISBN: 9780876598368
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

No education professional wants to think about an active shooter on campus. Recent tragic events illustrate a clear and imminent need to prepare educators for these threats. Public institutions are required by law to follow rules and regulations to train for emergency responses, and several states have enacted or are considering enacting regulations specific to early childhood programs.

Preschool Preparedness for an Active Shooter, the first book in the new Preparing for the Unexpected series, acknowledges and balances the harsh realities and challenges of emergency preparedness.

Learn how to:

• develop situational awareness,
• create rings of security in your facility,
• promote a culture of safety,
• respond in an emergency,
• conduct drills, and
• instill emergency practices in children that will last a lifetime.

Chapter 1:
Background on the Threat

No one wants to find herself caught in the middle of an active-shooter scenario. Unfortunately, these scenarios can and do happen. Just as we prepare for hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes, we must also prepare for active-shooter events. In planning for all types of disasters, including active-shooter scenarios, special consideration must be taken for our most vulnerable population: children. Understanding what constitutes an active-shooter event and who perpetrates this type of crime is important for preparedness efforts. On its webpage “Active Shooter Resources,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Unfortunately, there is not one profile that fits or predicts who might become an active shooter. Shooters have come in all ages, sexes, races, backgrounds, and religions. Even though each potential shooter is different, a review of historical events points to some similarities that the majority of these criminals share. Many active shooters believe that they will gain popularity and notoriety for their heinous acts, which is why we purposefully omit the names of these individuals in this publication.

Most active shooters share the following characteristics:

• Personal grievance
• Interest in prior shootings
• Prior encounters with law enforcement
• Personal connection with the location
• Preplanning of the attack
• Single individual

Mass shootings are typically not carried out on a whim. Instead, most shootings are preplanned, and a majority of the shooters actually have personal connections to the sites that they attack. However, rarely do they make plans to escape from the scene or location. The majority of attackers do not plan to escape but rather plan to be killed by law enforcement, to commit suicide, or to be apprehended. These traits and characteristics are important to keep in mind when we begin to plan our response.

Jillian Peterson of Hamline University and James Densley of Metropolitan State University report further data on school shooters:

• 91 percent are students or former students
• 87 percent were in crisis before the shooting
• 80 percent were suicidal prior to the shooting
• 78 percent leaked their plans ahead of time, usually on social media

Characteristics that drive active shooters are important to understand as we prepare. First and foremost, the shooters recognize that they have a limited amount of time to inflict harm on others. The shooters know they have to act quickly before they run out of ammunition or are confronted by law enforcement officials. Ultimately, their goal is to kill as many people they can, as quickly as possible.

Prior shooters have chosen locations with weak or little security, referred to as soft targets. They chose these places because they offered easy access to unprotected individuals. Much like other criminals, they looked for locations with doors that were unlocked, individuals who were not paying attention, or places that lacked security measures. During a majority of past shootings, the incidents concluded quickly when the shooters were faced with obstacles or resistance.

Up against the constraints of time, most active shooters choose victims at random. Shooters often look for quick and easy targets, leading them to choose locations with large populations: nightclubs, movie theaters, sporting events, concerts, and schools. In many cases, these locations were chosen not at random but for their high concentration of potential victims.

While it is certainly important to prepare for active-shooter incidents, it’s also important to keep the threat in perspective. Active-shooter events are still relatively infrequent. As with all hazards that we prepare for, we must take into account the likelihood and probability of these events occurring.

According to FBI data, between 2000 and 2017 there were 250 mass shootings in the United States, killing a total of 799 people. For comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that in any given year about 610,000 Americans die of heart disease. The fact is that we are much more likely to die from heart disease than from an active-shooter incident.

In any given year, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), more than 10 million men and women in the United States are physically abused by an intimate partner. Intimate-partner violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime in this country. The effects of domestic violence are not confined to adults: One in fifteen children is exposed to such violence each year, and 90 percent of these children are eyewitnesses to the violence. Another type of violence that is a significant public health concern, according to Healthline, is suicide, the tenth-leading cause of death in the United States. Beyond violence and chronic disease, accidents or unintentional injuries are a leading health concern in the United States, especially for people ages one to forty-four. Accidents lead to 28 million emergency room visits each year and are the third-leading cause of death in this country.

We hear a lot about active-shooter incidents at schools, and our inclination is likely to think that children are more at risk than adults. However, when examining the odds of our children dying from an active-shooter incident, we see figures similar to those for adults. For example, students are 250 times more likely to die at home from domestic violence, 350 times more likely to die in a car wreck, and 150 times more likely to die from suicide than from an active-shooter incident (ChildTrends, 2019). So while it is important for students to be prepared and learn response techniques, the chance of dying from an active-shoot incident remains relatively low (Ropeik, 2018).

What Are the Odds?

According to the National Safety Council, an American’s lifetime odds of dying in a mass shooting committed in any location are 1 in 11,125. For comparison, the odds of dying in a car accident are 1 in 491; of drowning, 1 in 1,133; of being struck by lightning, 1 in 3,000; and of choking on food, 1 in 3,461. The odds of a student being a victim of a school-associated shooting are 1 in 2.5 million.

These statistics are provided to give you some peace of mind. While it may seem like active-shooter events are happening very frequently, the likelihood of being involved in one of these situations is extremely low. As with all of our preparedness activities, we want to ensure we are aware of the scope and risk. The purpose of this book is not to cause anxiety or fear but to empower the reader through discussion of tools and techniques and an examination of leading practices for active-shooter response.

To summarize, active shooters are criminals with the intent to inflict harm or kill others, but they do not necessarily have a relationship to their target location. In the context of early childhood education, there could be people familiar with locations who plan to inflict harm. This could be an estranged parent, a disgruntled or recently fired employee, or even someone with ill intent toward children.

It is important to be discreet about sharing preparedness plans and about updating and revising those procedures. In the early childhood workforce, according to researcher Noriko Porter, each year we have a 30 percent national turnover rate. Employees, parents, and others come and go from child-care locations, and it’s important to bear in mind that a small percentage of people could have ill intent.

Throughout this publication, we offer recommendations and strategies on how to address active-shooter scenarios, as well as provide examples from prior scenarios for context. As we’ve discussed, much can be learned from previous tragedies, and the goal is to stay one step ahead of potential future shooters. The shooters are reviewing and sometimes idolizing earlier tragedies. However, as child-care professionals look to prepare themselves and their facilities, these prior events can offer many lessons and opportunities to think differently about how to respond to such scenarios in the future.

Chapter 2:
Historical Lessons Learned

Our purpose in reviewing prior mass shootings is not to cast blame or second-guess decisions made by victims or first responders in the confusion and chaos of a situation. Rather, it is to learn from these incidents by examining what worked well and identifying areas for possible improvement. In all these events, it would not be fair to compare the information that we have today to the information available while an incident unfolded, as strategies and tactics have changed and continue to evolve. In all cases, we remember the heroes, the victims, and the families who are still suffering from these senseless tragedies.

Columbine High School, 1999

What Happened

Two students plan...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Background on the Threat
• Chapter 2: Historical Lessons Learned
• Chapter 3: Applying the Lessons Learned to Early Childhood Facilities
• Chapter 4: Situational Awareness and Creating a Cultureof Safety
• Chapter 5:Taking Action
• Chapter 6:Conducting Drills
• References and Recommended Reading