AN ATTACK PLANNED FOR 2021.. SOMEONE SPOKE UP
Killers using all sorts of weapons, plan their attacks over time. Someone usually get a piece of the puzzle. In the link above, a young person did speak up. The student was planning an attack for 2021. The students are studying the past massacres.
As we enter the end of this school year, 2018, people will look back on this year as a very violent one in our schools. Rare is no longer a word that most would use to describe the shootings or threats of violence to our schools. Was there ever a time that threats of violence were rare?
I went to school in the late 60's and early 70's. I know what a riot in a junior high and high school is like. I know what blood on the face of a friend looks like. We were not considered victims then. We were kids going to school during the turbulent civil rights era. People are still fighting for civil rights because positive change has to take place in the heart first, before positive change can be felt in a community. New laws offer consequences for breaking the code. New laws do not offer real change.
Human trafficking, the modern term for selling slaves, is still part of the problem. Was human cruelty ever rare?
There was a time when the massacres were rare in our schools. They are no longer rare. As we have seen in the last 20 years, the violence impacts every aspect of society when a violent attack happens in our schools. Even though we are a nation that has legalized abortion, fortunately people still react when children are killed.... or do we?
I wish the residents in Parkland, Florida had been more educated on what has been studied in the past about at least two of the best known school shootings. Pages after pages have been written. I have written on this blog before about the Guide to Safe Schools. That report was mandated by President Bill Clinton after the 1997-98 school year. I wonder if any of my teacher friends or those involved in any educational setting have read any parts of it, in 2018. I know many who knew nothing about the report in the years immediately following its publication. Columbine may never have happened if it had been distributed and read as the experts had planned.
The school in Sante Fe,Texas recently has been awarded a grant because of the recent massacre at their school. But will they learn? To me, they are being rewarded for failure.
I do thank the victims who file lawsuits and ASK questions. But they are not the experts in prevention. Their schools are on a lengthy list of failures to protect the students ( broken laws which have long existed to hold people accountable - ignored).
We hear from the victims and the family survivors. We hear so much from experts. But do we listen? If you are interested in protecting your school or community, pay attention to the reports that have come out to help explain the events of the past. Yesterday's news becomes tomorrow's headlines when we choose to pretend our families, schools, workplaces and communities are immune to disaster.
OFFICE OF THE CHILD ADVOCATE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
PAGE 107:
It is fair to surmise that, had AL’s mental illness been adequately treated in the last years of his life, one predisposing factor to the tragedy of Sandy Hook might have been mitigated. Although parents and other legal guardians ultimately are responsible for their children's health and safety, it is the educational and professional systems that must provide a safety net in instances where parents cannot or do not care successfully for a child. This report in no way blames parents, educators or mental health professionals for AL’s heinous acts, nor for his severe mental deterioration and extreme detachment from relationships with human beings, but authors point to the need for renewed vigilance by the child-serving professionals and systems to identify and ensure sufficient, effective services for the potentially tens of thousands of other children who slip between the cracks every year as a result of these types of problems. AL’s story highlights the need to address the profound gaps in our continuum of services for children with developmental and mental health needs, and further develop our capacity to provide carefully individualized, timely, and sustained assistance not only to children and young adults but also to their families, instead of waiting until severe crises or developmental failures (school drop-out, unemployment, divorce, homelessness, or delinquency) necessitate costly emergency services, the break-up of families, or the removal of children or adults from their families or society—as well as rarer mass tragedies. It is also imperative that states and communities develop practices and policies that facilitate ready exchange of information from one system to another. All service agencies that intersect with children: schools, pediatricians, and mental health providers have responsibilities to support children’s health and well-being, and we cannot continue to compartmentalize children’s “mental health” into a singular program or service that may always be someone else’s or some other entity’s responsibility. Holding systems accountable will require attention to appropriate resource allocation and utilization, including strengthening community mental health resources and the ability to flexibly import those services into home, schools, and other natural settings. But accountability will also require that we ably assess the quality of our service delivery, be it pediatric medical care, mental health evaluation, treatment, and special education services. While the authors’ focus has been on AL’s psychological deterioration, we reiterate that this should not be taken to mean that we do not recognize the ubiquitous role that guns, and especially assault weapons with high capacity magazines, play in mass murder. In fact, while mental illness plays only a small role in violence in America, assault weapons are an increasingly common denominator in violent crimes. The widespread access to assault weapons and high capacity ammunition is an urgent public health concern. Finally, none of the findings in this report should be interpreted as exculpating or reducing AL’s accountability for his actions. Roughly twenty percent of adolescents and young adults suffer from a variety of mental illnesses. 124 Many of these are complex (with multiple diagnoses), treatment resistant, and accompanied by a multiplicity of severe and confounding psychosocial problems. And yet, only an infinitesimally small number of such individuals go on to commit murder. While we describe the predisposing factors and compounding stresses in AL’s life, we do not conclude that they add up to an inevitable arc leading to mass murder. There is no way to adequately explain why AL was obsessed with mass shootings and how or why he came to act on this obsession. In the end, only he, and he alone, bears responsibility for this monstrous act."
THE COLUMBINE REPORT- AT THE COLUMBINE SITE.
Read through some of the thousands and thousands of pages of reports. The principal on the night of April 20, 1999 stated on national television that there was no history of issues with the two students who committed the well planned massacre. He was lying.
ERIC HARRISON'S TERMINATION REPORT OF JUVENILE DIVERSION
DYLAN KLEBOLD'S JUVENILE DIVERSION PROGRAM- EXAMPLE OF DOCUMENT
SOMEONE WHO SPOKE UP
"There were many warning signs that something wasn't right in Dylan and Eric's world; several people saw those signs and yet nothing prevented the bloody events of 4-20-1999. Perhaps it was too easy for most people to dismiss what they saw. After all it was the boys' last year of school and they were smart guys. They were two weeks away from graduation, even. Surely if they were going to make mischief, they wouldn't wait till they were at the brink of freedom from the school they hated so much to do something to it. Right? Wrong. For whatever reason, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided it was more important to blow up their school and broadcast their rage-fueled message than it was to migrate to the next phase of life."
Information on the Parkland shooter comes out weekly. It is surprising that anyone in any type of administrative position is still holding a job there.
For what we have failed to do.....................Father forgive us.
Marian R. Carlino
June 2, 2018
