School shootings have been increasing every year since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting claimed the lives of 26 students and staff a decade ago. On average, a school shooting is likely to occur every four weeks. The mantra to end school shootings is “never again.” Yet, in 2022, over 50 school shootings have set a record high.
K.D. National Force Security (KDNFS) has been collecting and analyzing school shooting data that occurred in 2022. March and October of 2022 were the months during which the highest number of school shootings occurred, yet the highest concentration of school shootings happened in the fall season. Regardless of these findings, school shootings can happen anytime, anywhere, and we all must be prepared. We can do this by having school security specialists (SSS) in our schools.
Benefits of School Security Specialists
A SSS provides staff members, students, and parents peace of mind that they are protected. A SSS offers situational awareness for others who are not aware of their surroundings. This is one example of situational awareness, where one acknowledges his or her surroundings and knows where closest exits are.
Should an incident occur, the SSS should be designated as the on-site first responder. A 2019 study by the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) explains how school resource officers (SRO) or SSS can respond to threats actively and substantially faster than in cases where law enforcement officers must respond from the off-site.
The NTAC studied 41 incidents of targeted school violence that occurred at K-12 schools in the United States from 2008 to 2017. Response times for School Resource Officers and Outside Law Enforcement were compared as follows:
SROs: “In 27 cases (66%), a security officer or SRO was assigned to the school on either a full- or part-time basis. During 20 of the attacks (49%), the officer was on duty at the school. In over one-quarter of the cases (n = 12, 29%), the officer or SRO was able to make it to the scene of the attack within one minute. In three of the attacks (7%), it took between one and five minutes for the officer to respond, and for two attacks (5%), it took between five and 10 minutes.
Outside Law Enforcement: “In nearly one-third of the cases (n = 13, 32%), it took external first responders between one and five minutes to arrive on scene after the attack was initiated, and in about a quarter of the cases (n = 11, 27%) first responders arrived between five and ten minutes after the attack began. In only one case, outside law enforcement responded in one minute or less, because officers were already at the school conducting K-9 drug sweeps at the time of the attack.”
Source: U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence
A SSS is part of the school community and helps build relations with all involved. A SSS builds rapport with staff members, students, parents, etc. This relationship can provide trust and comfort among students where they feel comfortable telling the SRO or SSS information about a potential incident.
The National Association of School Resource Officers relates how SRO Christopher Smith of the Fort Worth Police Department prevented a shooting in his school in 2019. Smith defused a conflict that was brewing between two groups of students, and both claimed they would “let it go.” However, a parent of one of the students called the school to inform them that another student was planning to bring a gun to campus. When Smith heard of this news, he knew a possible location where the student could be from building that rapport between the groups. When Smith came to the location, he saw the student walking across the school property while holding a rolled-up hoodie that concealed a 9 mm handgun and a loaded magazine. If it weren’t for Smith’s rapport with the group of students, he would not have known the location of where the student was going to enter the school grounds and would not have confiscated the deadly weapon.
The last benefit is that a SSS can identify the root of the problem for the student’s misbehavior. A SSS must build rapport with staff members and students. This allows us to recognize unusual behavior. Writing in the Children’s Legal Rights Journal last year, Associate Editor Madeleine Morris described how an SRO was assigned to a case where a student stole food from the school cafeteria. The SRO found that the student was stealing the food because their parents were using all their money to buy drugs and refused to sign the slip for their child to have free lunch. The SRO realized he did not do this out of misbehavior, but to survive, as a result of his discussions with the student. Even though SRO and SSS are placed in schools to protect all staff members and students, they are also there to help students in vulnerable situations.
Conclusion
When selecting a school security company, it is essential to ensure the specialists can build rapport with all and have enough experience to stop any violent incident.
The KDNFS School Security System was specifically developed and custom-designed for Pre-K through 12th-grade educational environments. Educators, law enforcement agencies, parent-teacher associations, the community, and school boards highly regard our tested and proven system.
K.D. National Force Security, LLC is a privately owned, bonded, and fully insured company comprised of credentialed and experienced law-enforcement experts. Providing school security services for 10 years, KDNFS has set the standard in school security, with each of our professional Security Specialists having more than 20 years of experience. To learn more about how KDNFS can protect you from senseless violence, contact us at info@kdnfs.com or (609) 635-5037.
