My School

Posted: August 26th, 2021

My School

Name

Institutional Affiliation

My School

Introduction

            An active shooter is a person who kills or attempts to kill people in a confined and populated place. The typicalactive shooting motives include anger, revenge, or the perpetuation of an ideology (Blair, Nichols, Burns & Curnutt, 2016). Often, actual shooting incidences are unpredictable since there is usually no defined pattern by which the shooter selects the victims. In the recent past, these incidences have occurred in schools such as Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and the Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas resulting in the cutting short of young and promising lives. To prevent more schools from becoming victims of actual shooting incidences in future, it is paramount that local authorities work in conjunction with relevant federal government security agencies to improve the levels of threat assessment, mitigation, and preparedness ofschools as well as the surrounding communities (Elsass, Schildkraut & Stafford, 2016). Following the increased apprehensiveness of parents in recent times about the risk of an active shooting situation at the North Florida Community College, this paper, therefore, proposes to the Mayor’s Office an Emergency Action Plan detailing procedures aimed atincreasing the school’s and immediate community’s preparedness and mitigation for this imminent tragedy should it occur.

Key Considerations

            The immediate community surrounding North Florida College has enjoyed relative peace for many years. Naturally, therefore, the recent threat of active shooting taking place at the learning facility has caused much discomfort among students and parents alike. These fears are exacerbated by the massive enrollment of around 1200 students, which makes the school an easy target for a shooter who is determined to cause enormous losses and thereafter, walk away unharmed since students are usually unarmed. Also, this is a public community college serving all of North Florida’s six rural counties that include: Hamilton, Taylor, Madison, Suwannee, Lafayette, and Jefferson (Frazzano & Snyder, 2014). Thus, at the implementation stage of my Action Plan for the community surrounding North Florida College, the Mayor’s Office should endeavor to cover all of these counties.

The Community’s Preparedness Plan

            Since most shooting incidences last for only about 20 minutes before law enforcement agencies get notified to intervene, it is paramount for parents and other members of the community surrounding the North Florida College to be prepared to deal with this unfortunate situation. In that regard, the Mayor’s Office can intervene by first collecting then disseminating relevant and accurate disaster preparedness information to members of the public. The following set of steps has been proven to yield the best results when it comes to boosting the preparedness of communities in combating shooting incidences.

Step 1: Establish A Multidisciplinary Threat Assessment Taskforce

This taskforce should comprise of security personnel drawn from the anti-terrorist unit, municipal administrators, intelligence officers, and the available college resource officers. The taskforce will mainly be charged with directing, managing, and documentation of the threat assessment processes. On rare occasions, information pointing to a possible shootout has turned out to be false; hence, the work of this taskforce is essential in a move to verify the exact extent to which the existing claims of an imminent active shooting are true. Should it be discovered that these rumors are indeed factual, the mayor will be able to put in place counter-terror security personnel within the school as well as at strategic positions within all the six counties in North Florida, thus, significantly reduce the disaster response time and most importantly, contain the shooting before it occurs.

Step 2: Establish and Provide Training on a Central Reporting System

Members of the community need to be trained in handling a central reporting system. This system could be a toll-free phone number to call in case suspicious individuals are spotted in parts of North Florida or an online platform such as a WhatsApp Number for receiving pictures of spotted suspicious individuals. The mayor’s office should engage personnel who will solely be charged with monitoring this reporting system for prompt action to be effected. The Central Reporting System should be designed in compliance with the Incident Command System (ICS) which is the widely recommended National Incident Management System (NIMS) model for reporting active shooting (Cromp & Suberri, 2011).

Step 3: Determination of the Threshold for Law Enforcement Intervention

Upon the taskforce in step one above, establishing the exact extent of the active shooting, the Mayor’s Office will determine the proportional threshold for law enforcement intervention. For example, seeking the help of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Personnel to train parents and students on the latest active shooting preparedness strategies. Following the approval of the Mayor’s Office and DHS officers, my Emergency Action Plan recommends the creation of at least two marked evacuation routes for the North Florida Community College. Also, the mayor should approve the involvement of law enforcement officers, college students and emergency responders in regular drills within the school whichwill be instrumental in increasing the students’ preparedness for an active shooter scenario.

The Risk Preparedness and Mitigation Plan for the School

            It isessential to adequately train students of the North Florida Community College on some of the proven effective ways they can employ to stay out of harm’s way should a shooting incident take place. To this end, my proposed plan to the Mayor’s Office for boosting the students’ preparedness centers around the recommendations of the Department of Homeland Security in a shootout scenario. These recommended steps of action include Run, and Hide (Livingston, Rossheim,& Hall, 2019). The course of action to be taken under each of these recommendations is as described below.

Step 1: Run

If there is an accessible escape path to a student during an active shooting situation, he or she is encouraged to use it to evacuate the premises safely. While doing this, the student should be sure to:

1. Warn other students against entering the school section in which the active shooter might be.
2. Keep his or her hands visible.
3. Help other students escape if possible.
4. Leave his or her belongs behind as these might interfere with thepace at which he or she escapes from the active scene.
5. Call 911 when he or she gets to a safer place.
6. Follow instructions issued by any law enforcement officers present at the scene.

Step 2: Hide

            In the unfortunate event that the student finds it impossible to escape from the scene of an active shooting, he or she is encouraged to find a hiding place where the active shooter is less likely to find him. The student should ensure that the hiding place of choice exhibits the following features:

1. It should be out of the active shooter’s view.
2. It should provide protection should shots be fired in the student’s direction.
3. It should not trap or restrict the student’s movement options should need for such arise.

To prevent the active shooter from entering the student’s hiding place, he or she should do the following:

1. Lock the door.
2. Blockade the door with weighty furniture.
3. Close, cover, and move away from the windows.

Conclusion

Active shooting within schools is not a new thing in the United States of America. The shooting incident that occurred at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, and the one that followed shortly after that at the Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018, have provided a basis for the ongoing need for our leadership framework to provide well informed Action Plans in the prevention of future school shooting attacks. It is from the lessons that were learned from these tragic events in the history of school shooting attacks that the Emergency Action Plan discussed above is formulated. With the active participation of parents, DHS, Students, and all other stakeholders discussed above at the implementation stage of this report by the Mayor’s Office, the next shooting at the North Florida Community College can be thwarted, and thus, prevent the loss of student lives.

References

Elsass, H. J., Schildkraut, J., & Stafford, M. C. (2016). Studying school shootings: Challenges and considerations for research. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 41(3), 444-464.

Livingston, M. D., Rossheim, M. E., & Hall, K. S. (2019). A descriptive analysis of school and school shooter characteristics and the severity of school shootings in the United States, 1999–2018. Journal of Adolescent Health, 64(6), 797-799.

Frazzano, T. L., & Snyder, G. M. (2014). Hybrid targeted violence: Challenging conventional” Active Shooter” response strategies. Homeland Security Affairs, 10.

Blair, J. P., Nichols, T., Burns, D., & Curnutt, J. R. (2016). Active shooter events and response. CRC Press.

Cromp, R. F., & Suberri, G. (2011). U.S. Patent No. 7,996,465. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.