The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/school-shootings/)
The site of the 1999 school massacre has become a “macabre source of inspiration” for troubled people around the world and should be replaced by a new $70 million structure, suggests school superintendent Jason Glass.
Accused ex-Parkland sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson is out of jail. He has offered a defense of his actions, saying he was “scanning for the shooter,” not knowing he was inside the school.
Scot Peterson, the school resource officer criticized for his response to the 2018 shooting at a Parkland, Fl., high school that left 17 people dead, was fired and charged with several crimes. Experts say the case could be difficult to prove.
School districts are using products like gunshot detection systems that identify where shots are fired and apps that allow teachers to report attacks and connect with police. Dennis Kenney of John Jay College of Criminal Justice says, “What we’re trying to do is find some technological fix, and there isn’t one.”
The deaths of students who challenged shooters in Colorado and North Carolina prompts some educators to question the “ALICE” method of countering shooters taught in 5,600 districts. “Are we creating a generation of martyrs?” asked one expert.
The latest school to come under attack by a pair of student shooters sits about seven miles from the most notorious school shooting, also attacked by two student gunmen. One expert explains why such team attacks are so rare.
A new Florida law allowing classroom teachers to be armed first must convince local districts to go along with the idea. There are signs that most won’t.
Eighteen-year-old Sol Pais traveled from Florida to Colorado, bought a shotgun and talked on social media about the 1999 Columbine massacre before killing herself.
It seemed like the 1999 Columbine High School killings ushered in a new era of school shootings. Yet Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox says school shootings were more frequent in the 1990s than they are today.
“It’s become as routine as fire drills,” said Melissa Craven of the Denver Public Schools, whose 220 lockouts last year were tops among all districts. “We don’t have many students that have started their academic career with us who aren’t used to lockdowns.”