Preventing and responding to violence at schools was the theme of the University at Buffalo's 13th annual Safe Schools seminar. About 1,000 school educators, counselors and law enforcement gathered at UB's Center for the Arts Wednesday. WBFO's Focus on Education Reporter Eileen Buckley says 'threat assessment' could avoid an active shooter incident.
"Violence can be prevented,” said Dr. Dewey Cornell, Professor at the University of Virginia. Cornell was one of the featured speakers and expert on 'threat assessment' to prevent a violent attack.
Work on threat assessment started about 15-years ago. In the wake of Sandy Hook shootings, the state of Virginia made it mandatory last year for all public schools to have a 'threat assessment team'.
“As pointed out, many of these individuals contemplate, plan prepare for shootings well in advance, so there’s an opportunity to identify them. But even before that, these are individuals who are troubled in some way who can be reached out to and identified. School mental health serves are critically important in identifying individuals, young people, early long before there is a risk of a school shooting,” said Cornell.
Special Agent in Charge of Buffalo's FBI Office Adam Cohen also offered his expertise.
“The priority is always going to be to neutralize that threat.
Cohen said active shooter situations are a 'grave concern' to local, federal and state law enforcement.
“How often do you hear interviews on t.v., see people interviewed where they say ‘yeah he just wasn’t acting the right way – I felt something was off’, so a large part of this is pushing out the education side of it to tell people what those indicates could be,” explained Cohen.
Those attending the seminar learned about how to manage an active shooter or significant event at a school.
WBFO News spoke with Bill Harvey with the Honeoye Falls-Lima School District in Monroe County. He serves as director of transportation and security.
“And what we have worked hard to do over the last few years is to have kind of standardized format and culture in all of our buildings, so no matter what building a parent, a visitor goes to, any guest, they’re going to see the same format where we are screening passengers in. Not long ago, three, four years ago, we were a school go up, hit a button and they would just buzz you in,” said Harvey.
Special Agent in Charge Cohen noted the community can't bury its head in the sand and must discuss what would happen if a violent event were to take place in our region to be best prepared to react.
"Nobody wants something bad to happen in their backyard, in their community,” said Cohen. “Be best prepared to react to that in the event that something does actually take place.”
