Bill Mathias

Defender initiative

Introduction:

Although a terrorist attack on a school in the Lake County School District may be improbable , the first step toward preparedness is admitting that it is at least possible that terrorists could strike a school or schools in our county.

Teachers, administrators, school support staff, School Resource Officers, school security personnel, and other professionals on the front lines of our county's school are the first responders to any emergency which occurs in our schools. While we value our community public safety partners and we encourage our schools to work hand-in-hand with them in emergency planning, the reality is that those working inside a school will be the ones immediately responding to and managing an emergency incident while police, fire, EMS, and other community first responders are en route

This paper is intended to engage a dialogue to develop a policy for an armed school approach for preventing school attacks, while relatively new in the US, has been used successfully for many years in Israel and Thailand. Teachers and school officials in Israel are allowed and encouraged to carry firearms if they have former military experience in the IDF, which almost all do.

Background:

Some areas in the US have allowed "armed classrooms" to deter (or truncate) future attacks, presumably by changing helpless victims into armed defenders. In 2008, Harrold Independent School District in Texas became the first public school district in the U.S. to allow teachers with state-issued firearm-carry permits to carry their arms in the classroom; special additional training and ricochet-resistant ammunition were required for participating teachers.

Students at the University of Utah have been allowed to carry concealed pistols (so long as they possess the appropriate state license) since a State Supreme Court decision in 2006. In addition to Utah, Wisconsin and Mississippi each have legislation that allow students, faculty and employees with the proper permit, to carry concealed weapons on their public university's campuses.

Colorado and Oregon state courts have ruled in favor of Campus Carry laws by denying University's proposals to ban guns on campus. Ruling that the UC Board of Regents and the Oregon University System did not have the authority to ban weapons on campus. A selective ban was then re-instated, wherein Oregon state universities enacted a ban on guns in school building and sporting events or by anyone contracted with the university in question. State University as of June 2009, allows students to carry firearms on campus, the university still prohibits knives and other non-firearm weapons however. It is always tragic when a large number of people lose their lives, but it is worse when the deaths are of children.

DRAFT 1 Bill Mathias

This is a list of ten most recent massacres at schools.

10. Columbine High School Massacre 15 died | 24 injured | Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

April 20, 1999 : Two students stormed Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and murdered 12 other students aged 14 to 18 as well as a teacher. A further 24 people were injured before the attackers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed themselves.

9. University of Texas Clock Tower Shootings 18 killed | 31 injured | Charles Whitman

August 1, 1966 : University of Texas Clock Tower Shootings. After killing his wife and mother, Charles Whitman pointed a rifle from the observation deck of the University of Texas at Austin’s Tower and began shooting in a homicidal rampage that went on for 96 minutes. He killed fifteen people and wounded 31 others before being shot dead by police. David Gunby was wounded in the shooting but died 35 years later after ceasing dialysis

8. Dunblane massacre 18 killed | Thomas Hamilton | (the deadliest attack on children in United Kingdom history)

March 13, 1996 : Dunblane massacre. Unemployed former shopkeeper and Scout leader Thomas Hamilton walked into Dunblane Primary School armed with two 9 mm pistols and two .357 Magnum revolvers. He killed sixteen small children and a teacher. The subsequent police investigation revealed that Hamilton had loaded the magazines for his Browning with an alternating combination of fully metal jacketed and hollow point ammunition. This event led to the banning of handguns in the UK

7. Erfurt massacre 17 killed | 7 injured | Robert Steinhäuser (Worst German Rampage)

April 26, 2002 : Eighteen people died when an expelled former pupil went on a shooting spree at his school in the eastern German city of Erfurt. Masked and dressed in black, the gunman walked through classrooms killing 14 teachers, two schoolgirls and one of the first policemen on the scene before taking his own life.

6. Ma’alot massacre 26 killed | 60 wounded | DFLP, PLO | Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestine Liberation Organization

May 15, 1974: The Ma’alot massacre was an attack, carried out in Ma’alot, Israel by members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, that occurred on May 15, 1974, the 26th anniversary of Israeli independence. In this massacre members of the DFLP murdered 22 religious high school students from the city of Safed. Ma’alot, located on a plateau in the hills of the Western Galilee region of Israel, some six miles south of the Lebanese border, was a development town founded in 1957 by Jewish refugees, mainly from Morocco and other Arab countries such as Tunisia. The terrorist

DRAFT 2 Bill Mathias attack was perpetrated by three members of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), al-Jabha al-Dimuqratiyya li-Tahrir Filastin.

5. Virginia Tech 32 killed, many more injured | Seung-Hui Cho

The Virginia Tech massacre was a comprising two separate attacks about two hours apart on April 16, 2007, on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, . The perpetrator, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded many more, before committing , making it the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

4. Bath School disaster 45 died | 58 injured | Andrew Kehoe

May 18, 1927 : In the deadliest mass school murder in United States history, former school board member Andrew Kehoe set off three bombs in Bath Township, Michigan killing 45 people and wounding 58. Kehoe killed himself and the superintendent by blowing up his own vehicle.

3. Beslan school hostage crisis At least 386 dead, including 31 hostage takers | Over 700 injured | Shamil Basayev’s Riyadus Salihiin group

September 1, 2004: A group of pro-Chechen armed rebels took more than 1,200 school children and adults hostage on September 1, 2004, at School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia. On the third day of the standoff, gunfire broke out between the hostage-takers and Russian security forces.

2. Red Lake High School massacre 10 killed | 12 injured | Jeff Weise

March 21, 2005 : At Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota, 16-year-old student Jeff Weise opened fire, killing five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard. Prior to the rampage, he had shot his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend. It later became apparent that Weise had visited neo-Nazi Web sites prior to the shooting.

1. Shady Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT / 26 killed / Adam Lanza

December 14,2012 Twenty-six people, including 20 children, killed after a shooting at a primary school in the US state of Connecticut, by Adam Lanza. The shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, which is in the western part of Connecticut

Proposal:

The " Armed school approach" would initially be implemented in our elementary schools; which are the most vulnerable. Those allowed to carry a concealed weapon would need to receive rigorous training. That training should exceed a state’s requirements and include scenarios of different situations as well as a psychological evaluation. It should be clear when and how to draw, fire and clear a weapon. The Lake

DRAFT 3 Bill Mathias

County Sheriff's Office would be responsible for training and annual certification of the individuals. There also should be close coordination between schools and local city's law enforcement agencies, ensuring that all parties are in agreement on all matters with regards to armed administrators or teachers.

The program would be voluntary. The expense for training, annual certification , and psychological evaluation would be at the expense of the school district. In addition, the approved weapon would be provided by the school district.

Currently Florida State Law prohibits weapons on school campuses. One option is that trained individuals are deputized as auxiliary police officers with limited authority, this will require buy in from Sheriff. Second option is to change State Law, this option would delay implementation.

The program should be vetted by the community to ensure that all concerns are addressed.

Conclusion

Keeping our children safe is a major responsibility of the school district. The financial requirement to put School Resource Officers on all campuses is a burden that the district has not budgeted for. It should be noted that no American school massacre has ever been stopped by the police, two have been stopped by armed citizens. In 1997 in Pearl, Mississippi, a 16-year-old Satanist murdered his ex-girlfriend and her friend and wounded seven other students at his high school. As he was preparing to leave the high school and kill children at a nearby junior high school, assistant principal Joel Myrick got his .45 handgun from his car, put it to the killer’s head, and held him at bay until the police arrived five minutes later.

In Edinboro, Pennsylvania, a school rampage abruptly ended when local merchant James Strand used a shotgun to convince the teenage killer to surrender. The teenager had killed one teacher and wounded one teacher and two classmates.

A terror attack on our schools would create fear and panic, disrupt the economy if the "business" side of school operations were shut down on a large scale, and instill a lack of confidence in our school and community leadership. Such terror tactics have already been employed elsewhere including attacks upon schools and school buses in the Middle East, and the Beslan, Russia, school terror attack.

During November 2004, FBI officials released information that a computer disc found in Iraq contained American school floor plans, photos and other information of six U.S. schools. This was the same week the U.S. Department of Education advised school leaders nationwide of the Beslan Siege. The downloaded data, found by U.S. military soldiers during a terrorist raid in July 2004, included a recommended crisis response report. The schools involved were in San Diego, Ca.; Fort Myers, Fla.; Jones County, Ga.; Birch Run, Mich.; and Franklinville and Rumson, both in New Jersey. U.S.

DRAFT 4 Bill Mathias government officials down played this information saying there was no real evidence of a specific threat to a school (MSNBC, 2004).

Another compelling source of evidence came from Lieutenant John Kost of the Sarasota County, Florida Sheriff’s Department. During a 2004 lecture titled “Inside the Terrorist Mind”; Lt. Kost explained his role with the Homeland Security Anti-Terrorism Task Force and disclosed how the Al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9-11, received their flight training in his jurisdiction. Lt. Kost was involved in hundreds of post 9-11 follow- up interviews concerning the involved terrorists, as well as having knowledge of the interrogations of at least twenty suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Kost said a common thread between the prisoners when they were separately interrogated was their admission of a plan to attack our schools and children. He further explained this plan consisted of simultaneously attacking 8-12 soft targets, including schools throughout the United States (Kost 2004).

It should be clear there is no quick fix, it will take time, resources, dedication and a shared vision by the entire community to appropriately address this issue. However, once made aware of this threat in its entirety, is there really any other responsible option other than to understand the issue, recognize its potential and prepare for the unthinkable?

DRAFT 5