Why school shooting prevention efforts fail
Ohio police didn't take an anonymous report seriously and sent a student who was plotting a school shooting to campus. Hours later he was arrested on felony charges.
"Anytime you hear those two words—'shooting' and 'school'—people go haywire". - Marimont Police Officer
Twelve hours after getting a tip from a parent about a school shooting plot targeting Mariemont High School in the Cincinnati, Ohio suburbs, the real life Barney Fife1 was sent out the next morning to investigate. City of Mariemont has a 10 officer police department (white hat in the video).
Here is a portion of the heavily redacted body camera footage of the interview released by the neighboring Fairfax, Ohio police department (full video obtained by WCPO):
After complimenting the father on his choice of handgun (“Any guns in the house? A little snub-nose?" "Nice!"), the officer does a short interview with the 14-year-old student on the front porch, the officer does more talking than listening, and then says to the teenage suspect, "get the heck to school, you aren't in any trouble."
As the teen walks away, the officer remarks to the father “we heard about this last night but didn’t want to send the night shift out and bother you”.
Later that day, the teen was arrested at school for plotting an attack with an adult in Colorado. It turns out, this 14-year-old student had been planning a school shooting for weeks. He planned to disable the school's CCTV, release sedative gases, attack the office first, kill 8 specific students, decide during the attack of there were other students he wants to kill, and then kidnap attractive students to rape. The teen planned to use both his father's gun (same one the officer complimented) and other weapons the adult coconspirator from Colorado would bring.
Rewind two years to Oxford, MI and the school counselor interviewed the 15-year-old shooter right before the attack. She decided he wasn't a threat and sent him back to class with a gun in his backpack.
This is an example of how a single point of failure occurs in the school shooting prevention system.
This officer is predisposed to think the threat isn't a big deal, he makes no effort to try to figure out what's happening or conduct a serious interview, he doesn't search the student or the home, and he sends the kid—who has been plotting an attack for weeks—to school.
Missed Clues
Even while conducting a sloppy interview, the teen and his father give away multiple clues about the situation:
14-year-old isn’t surprised the police are at his house at 7:50am
Father said his son has been the target of bullying (red flag)
Father knows details about the content of the threat before the officer tells him about it
Father said his son doesn’t know about his handgun but the kid isn’t surprised to see the police officer holding the gun when he comes outside
Father and son tell conflicting stories about who was making the threats and what they were saying in the school library the day prior
Anyone with basic training and awareness about school shooting plots should immediately notice all of these clues. The officer misses them all.
Best Practices
When a patrol officer, school resource officer, or school official is conducting an interview and investigation about a school shooting threat, here are some best practices to follow:
Conduct the interview in a quiet, private space.
Have at least two adults present during the interview.
Interview one person at a time (if there are multiple students and/or parents present, put them in separate rooms).
If possible, have someone with formal training and experience with conducting interviews (e.g., detective) ask the questions.
Gather information from sources and witnesses before talking to the suspect.
Use the information gathered about the situation to shape the questions for the suspect.
Ask short questions with open ended answers that give the interviewees an opportunity to provide detailed explanations.
Never cut off the responses from the witnesses or suspect, allow them to continue talking and elaborating on an answer.
If details are conflicting, ask follow-up questions to get more information.
Don’t sit on information about a school shooting plot for 12 hours to avoid bothering the night shift.
Don’t send the suspect to school or back to class until you finish the investigation and have all of the information needed to evaluate the threat.
Preventing school shootings requires everyone involved to take the threat seriously, conduct a timely and thorough investigation, involve staff with formal training, and follow best practices for conducting interviews.
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David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database and a national expert on school shootings. Listen to my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and Iowa Public Radio the day after the Perry High shooting.
Note: "Barney Fife" is not an insult. "Varieties of Police Behavior: Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities" by James Q. Wilson is one of the seminal texts studying policing. Officers in affluent communities like fictional Mayberry or real-world Mariemont, OH focus on 'service policing' and 'order maintenance'. These service style officers rarely deal with violent crime or make arrests. In low-street crime, homogeneous communities like Mariemont, the primary role/expectation of police officers is to resolve minor conflicts with discretion instead of imposing formal sanctions.