Recent events have caused many school, pupil transportation and public safety officials to re-examine the threat of school-related and school bus-related terrorism. While I am not predicting acts of terrorism, there are indicators that our risk for terrorist attacks on U.S. soil has increased.
As multi-hazard approaches to anti-terrorism are crucial for effective approaches, a number of experts are becoming increasingly concerned that the intensive focus on active shooter events is leaving schools, school buses and school-related special events inadequately prepared for terrorism attacks.
Example – Wide Implementation of Unproven Active Shooter Training Program
Firm data demonstrates that at least one insurance carrier recently paid claims relating to emergency room treatment of school employees who have been injured in the past 20 months during active-shooter response training. It is quite evident that millions of dollars are being spent on emergency room bills for this as yet unproven type of training. Once surgeries, physical therapy and salaries for substitutes have been paid out, Iowa claims alone are expected to top more than $1 million relating to these poorly conceived and delivered training programs. It is difficult to estimate what the cost of litigation against school systems, training companies and individual instructors will be. But risk management experts are confident that considerable litigation costs will follow. When we consider that the costs for these types of injuries are likely to be far greater than a few million dollars, the fiscal impact is likely to be substantial.
In addition, controlled testing and actual incidents in the field indicate that many people respond in unintended ways once they complete these types of training and are tested with a variety of scenarios. Trainees from these programs frequently opt to attack people who are not depicted as active shooters in scenarios where this could result in needless injury and, in some cases, preventable death. Meanwhile, most of this training provides no or only token coverage of alternative attack methodologies that have been frequently utilized in school and school bus attacks globally. The threats include fire, explosives and chemicals, either as alternative attack methodologies. As we have seen in the United States, these methodologies can also utilized instead of or in combination with attacks using firearms.
School Bus Terrorism Based on Research
My colleague Rod Ellis and I have both traveled to Israel to learn advanced antiterrorism concepts from the Israel Police, Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli Security services. We had the opportunity to learn from high ranking national police officials who have vast experience with school and school bus terrorism. The people we interacted with emphasized that it can be very dangerous to assume that the next event will resemble the last terrible attack on a school or on a school bus. Just as it can be very dangerous to focus on fire, tornado or hostage situations to the exclusion of active shooter incidents, focusing primarily on active shooter incidents is an unsound approach. A narrow approach could be an especially costly error for school terrorism events where mass casualty loss of life can be a primary goal of well-prepared, equipped and experienced individuals or groups.
School Terrorism Preparedness Requires an All-hazards Approach
Preparedness approaches that focuses on one type of security incidents such as active shooter incidents typically offer little or no protection against school terrorist attacks which often utilize fire, explosives, chemicals, radiological materials, biological weapons, electromagnetic pulse devices and other attack methodologies. For example, a man with a can of gasoline and a lighter killed more than 40 people in an attack on a mass transit bus in China last year. School terrorism preparedness should be addressed by a proper all-hazards school crisis plan. Whether the concern involves terrorism or violence overall, focusing the majority of time, energy and fiscal resources on any one type of security incident can be extremely dangerous.
Mike Dorn is the executive director of Safe Havens International, a global, non-profit school safety center for kindergarten through 12th grade. He is a former school district police chief for Bibb County, Ga., a former school safety specialist for the Georgia Emergency Mangement Agency and a former anti-terrorism planner and lead program manager at the Georgia Office of Homeland Security.
