offenders to levels of violent criminal activity that we have not seen in juvenile offenders in several decades. We are seeing some significant rejections of the
approaches that have contributed to these problems in many communities. But as mentioned, it is not easy to replace a 20-year law enforcement officer or prosecutor who leaves the field or retires early due to these chal- lenges, which involves a massive exodus of talent unlike anything I have seen in my four decades in the field.
No Easy Answers–But There are Opportunities to Reduce Risk Because the driving factors of school violence are so
complex and are affected by so many societal factors, there are no simple, inexpensive or easy answers to “solve” the problems we are facing. However, there are approaches that can reduce the risk of community vio- lence transportation departments and drivers can take:
Correct training scars resulting from popular but dangerous active shooter training While many school districts have used a variety of
highly popular active shooter training programs, we have now seen catastrophic failures of several of these training programs with more than 50 victims being shot in just four schools where this type of training had recently been con- ducted. These four school shootings have resulted in more than $130 million in out-of-court settlements to date. One of the biggest problems we are seeing is that these programs often create training scars because they focus only on active shooter events, which can condi- tion drivers to take actions that will increase rather than decrease the chances an armed individual who is not an active shooter will open fire. Examples we have seen include a hostage situation and several instances of a person brandishing but not firing a gun opening fire when a student or staff member opted to try to subdue or disarm them. If drivers have completed this type of training, we
suggest retraining on how to handle the statistically far more common incidents with firearms such as a person brandishing but not firing a weapon, a student threaten- ing suicide with a gun, or a hostage situation.
For detailed information on how to accomplish retraining of bus drivers visit and listen to the Safe Havens International audio podcast “Lessons from
Analysis of Active Shooter Incidents in 11 countries” at
stnonline.com/go/br.
Training on situational awareness/pattern matching and recognition Training and empowering drivers to use their experi- ence to spot and not disregard anomalies based on the time, location, and actions of people that are not congruent
with what they normally see can be extremely valuable.
Two free and short training videos on situational awareness and pattern matching and recognition can be found at
stnonline.com/go/bt to explain
these powerful concepts.
Training on verbal de-escalation techniques using evidence-based programs This is an extremely important topical area for school bus
drivers, route supervisors, office personnel, and transporta- tion directors. Some school systems have seen reductions of assaults on district employees reduced by nearly 70 per- cent using this type of training as well as major decreases in arrests, alternative placements and expulsions.
Training on the recognition of gang activity Local regional and state law enforcement officers can
often provide informative presentations on recognizing indications of gang activity and give advice on how to handle gang related situations drivers may encounter.
Training on radio procedures a valuable tool Though seemingly a basic topic, it is very important
that drivers are trained on how to make fast, concise radio transmissions in emergency situations while pro- viding enough information for emergency responders to send the right resources to the correct location. A few examples include: •
Pressing the microphone to their throat to drown out background noise, if the level of noise makes it difficult for people to hear and understand what they are saying.
• Repeat their location, nature of the problem and help needed twice to reduce the chances of a miscommunication which could result in serious delays.
•
If a duress (panic) system is in use, drivers need to know to provide additional information by radio or phone if and when it is safe to do so. This is also important if the duress system fails as has occurred in at least one active shooter event in a school.
The author of 28 books in his field, Michael Dorn’s school safety work has taken him to 11 countries during his more than four-decade campus safety and homeland security career. A former school district police chief, Dorn survived 16 attempts by suspects to kill him with firearms, knives, a bayonet and other weapons during his 20-year campus law enforcement career. Michael has provided official post-incident assistance for 22 active assailant and targeted school shootings in U.S., Canadian and Mexican K-12 schools. Michael welcomes reader feedback and questions at
www.safehavensinternational.org. ●
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