Twenty years and countless lives later, what have we learned from the
Columbine massacre?
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
APR 19, 2019 | 10:00 AM
Frank DeAngelis was in his third year as principal at Colorado’s Columbine
High School in 1999. Twenty years after the attack — in which 12
students and a teacher were killed and 24 others were injured — DeAngelis
recalls how few of the security measures that are so common to today’s
schoolchildren were available to him. The school had one resource officer, it
conducted only mandatory fire drills, and two cameras had recently been
installed.
The April 20, 1999 killings ushered in an era in which school shootings
are sadly too common. A recent analysis found that America has seen more than
700 shooting incidents on school grounds in the past 20 years. The deadliest
ones include Virginia Tech in 2007, Sandy Hook in 2012, and Parkland, Fla., and
Santa Fe, Texas, both in 2018.
While school buildings have become physically safer in the past 20 years
— featuring remote-controlled door locks, metal detectors, bulletproof glass
doors and other sophisticated security measures
“Our schools are technically more secure, everybody is more trained, but
it hasn’t made us any safer," said Jillian Peterson, a criminology and
criminal justice professor at Hamline University in Minnesota. “It’s not
actually having the impact that we wanted to have, so I think that’s why we’re
hitting a point right now when people are saying, ‘We need a shift in our
strategy because this hasn’t been working so far.’”
Training
for the worst
Marsha Levick, co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center, finds that turning
schools into high-security facilities and training children for active shooter
scenarios have created “a false level of security.”
“Kids are doing all kinds of crazy drills,” she said. “We are creating a
generation in which we are making fear and concern for public safety part of
their daily lives.”
In the 2015-16 school year, the most recent period for which data is
available, about 95% of schools had drilled students on lockdown procedures,
according to a report released this month by the National Center for Educational Statistics. Critics say the
practice can provoke anxiety or even traumatize children.
Levick said that school districts have been forced to take dollars from
counseling to fund physical security measures and active shooter training.
The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of
one counselor per 250 students. But the national average, as of 2016, was one
counselor per 464 students.
Meanwhile, the country’s 10 largest school districts, including New York
City, employ more security officers than counselors, according to an analysis by The 74, a nonprofit news
website.
“It’s a tragic commentary on our society right now,” Levick said. “The
assumption is, ‘we can’t stop this.’”
“We’re kind of handing the script to kids and making them rehearse it,”
she said.
Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed themselves
after the attack, were seniors at the school.
In this March 23 photo, origami cranes, a symbol of peace, (Thomas
Peipert/AP)
Alarming
numbers
Although school shooting data can be inconsistent depending on the
methodology used, one frequently cited organization, the NPS
Center for Homeland Defense and Security, reports that
America has seen more than 730 shooting incidents on school grounds since 1999.
The analysis also found that 2018 was the worst year for school shootings in
modern history, with 97 incidents. So far this year, 22 incidents have been
reported, about 10 behind 2018′s pace.
Additionally, a poll released Tuesday by the Associated Press and the
NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 67% of parents think schools
have become less safe while only 13% think schools are now safer than two
decades ago.
The
gun factor
The poll also found that more than half of respondents, 57%, said
stricter gun laws make schools safer.
Levick acknowledges that metal detectors, armed guards and drills can
save lives, but she sees them as “Band-Aid” approaches if gun regulations are
not being addressed.The Columbine gunmen obtained their weapons from a friend,
and shooters in several other school killings also did not buy their firearms.
Adam Lanza, who carried out the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School
in Connecticut, used his mother’s weapons in the attack.
A gunman in Las Vegas did just that when he shot at a crowd of
concertgoers in 2017, killing 58 people and wounding more than 500.
Florida, meanwhile, took a different and more controversial approach
following last year’s Parkland school shooting. State legislators voted this
week to allow classroom teachers to be armed if they undergo training.
Despite the shift, the AP-NORC poll found that less than half of parents
are “extremely or very confident” in the ability of schools or law enforcement
agencies to respond to an active shooter.
The poll also shows that 48% of respondents blamed the availability of
guns for the increase of school shootings, though the top response was
bullying, with 50%.
The
role of social media and traditional media
One place where bullying has proliferated is on social media. Levick and
DeAngelis worry that platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have made
cyberbullying more common and allowed hateful ideologies like white nationalism
to influence teenagers.
“A lot of radicalization is really happening online,” Levick said. “It’s
not unreasonable to extrapolate that social media can have a detrimental effect
on students.”
But 20 years ago, traditional media played a major role in the moments
and days after the Columbine shooting.
The front page of
the Daily News on April 21, 1999, the day after two gunman opened fire inside
Columbine High School in Colorado killing 13 before committing suicide. (NYDN)
Journals and tapes from the killers later revealed they had been
planning the rampage for a year and had been inspired by the 1995 Oklahoma City
bombing.
Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007,
idolized the Columbine shooters and once wrote that he wanted to “repeat
Columbine.”
A study by the National Center for Health Research describes the
problem as a contagion effect, in which the more attention a shooter gets, the
more likely the attack will inspire a future mass shooter.
Solving
the puzzle
Hill said students at Columbine are used to real lockdowns and lockdown
drills because of the frequency of threats against the school, but she said the
climate inside the school is positive.
Hill is the co-founder of #MyLastShot, a recently
launched gun violence prevention campaign led by Columbine students. The
project encourages people to indicate on their IDs or other personal items that
if they are killed as a result of gun violence they want authorities and the
media to share images of their death, no matter how graphic.
But Hill and the former principal acknowledge that schools, including
Columbine, need to focus more on mental health resources. DeAngelis said the
ideal approach must involve tighter gun laws, more investment in counselings
for students, more careful coverage by the media, and more community
initiatives to engage students and families.
“When you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, I think you have a
chance of combating some of these acts of violence," he said.
Levick said the best way to prevent school shootings is to get parents,
students, faculty and law enforcement involved in tackling the root causes.
“The choice has to be one of engaging parents and engaging
communities," she said, “and not turning everything into a 911 call.”
New York Daily News
CONTACT
Breaking news reporter Nelson
Oliveira has worked for the Daily News since March 2019. He was born and raised
in Brazil and has covered local and national stories for news outlets in New
York and Connecticut since 2013. Copyright © 2019, New York Daily News
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