Educators, Police Learn To Profile Violent Students

In more than two dozen school shootings since 1996, the shooters tended to have several things in common.

They were angry young white males - mostly teenagers from small towns who had grown up in comfortable middle- to upper-middle-class homes.

They were loners, regarded as losers by their peers. Many of them obsessed over violent video games, hateful music and imaginary relationships with girls who didn’t notice them. They liked guns and most were very smart.

And in nearly every case, the teens openly made threats of violence before the shootings.

“These aren’t your stupid pissed-off kids, these are your smart pissed-off kids,” said Kevin Willett, a national expert on school violence who was in Spokane on Wednesday.

“They really are your outcasts, the ones who can’t attach themselves to a pro-social group.”

Willett, a dispatch supervisor with the Redwood City, Calif., Police Department and a public safety trainer, led an all-day seminar on how to profile potentially violent students, prevent incidents and develop strategies to respond to emergencies. Nearly 60 Spokane-area law enforcement and education officials attended the seminar at the Deaconess Health and Education Center.

“Hopefully we will partner together and save some kids,” Willett told the crowd. “The reason we are here is to plan, prepare and talk to families. After you leave today, you are going to work harder knowing you can make a difference.”

Despite the rash of school shootings that have terrified the nation, Willett reminded his audience that schools, by and large, are still safe places.

“It’s not epidemic,” he said. “Most of our kids are safe when they go to school.”

But the statistics are startling.

A total of 235 violent deaths occurred in the country’s schools from 1992 to 1999, Willett said. And in a recent survey conducted by the National Education Association, 8 percent of school-age children questioned said they had carried a gun to school in the past 30 days, Willett said..

“They usually don’t own their own weapon,” he said. “They steal it from their parents and grandparents.”

Throughout Wednesday’s seminar, Willett reviewed the shootings, starting with the Moses Lake tragedy, when Barry Loukaitis gunned down two students and a teacher at Frontier Junior High School in 1996. The profile of each disturbed teenage shooter was startlingly similar.

“Rejection, discipline and humiliation,” Willett said.

The reason shootings mostly have been limited to smaller American cities has to do with numbers of student outcasts, he said.

“This doesn’t happen in our New Yorks, Chicagos and Baltimores,” he said. “In large cities, there are a lot of them so they group together, and that can be therapeutic for them.”

In addition to geography, the time of year can predict the likelihood of school violence. Nearly 80 percent of school shootings occur between December and May, he said.

The reason, Willett said, is students usually decide who they like and dislike by late fall. From there, bad feelings and tension can intensify.

“There is a season for school violence,” he said. “It’s a combination of relationship stuff and scholastic pressure.”

In the latter half of the seminar, Willett focused mostly on the lessons learned from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the site of the country’s worst school shooting that left 15 dead and 21 seriously wounded.

Using rarely seen video footage, 911 tapes and still photographs of the scene, Willett offered a detailed analysis of the emergency response to the massacre, and offered tips on how schools and law enforcement agencies can devise crisis response plans and be prepared for the worst.

For teachers, he suggested, for example, having an emergency “class bucket” which can be kept on hand in case of a lock down. In addition to first-aid supplies, he suggested filling it with a cellular phone, a list of important numbers, a map of the school and a copy of the school’s emergency plan, among other items.

He also offered tips to law enforcement officials, from keeping an inventory of school maps and blueprints, to communicating with school principals to keeping tabs on students who have been expelled or suspended.

“Expulsion just lands them in the community,” he said. “They are now at your malls and skateboard parks. You haven’t ended the problem by expelling them.”

Spokane County sheriff’s Lt. Pete Bunch, who is also deputy director of Spokane County 911, said the tips and information were helpful.

“There are lessons to be learned, and he brings up valid points,” Bunch said.

“Don’t you dare put this in a filing cabinet to collect dust,” Willett good-naturedly told the group at the end of the eight-hour session. “Don’t let any of this stuff be forgotten.”