The Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooting tragedy has raised questions about how safe the province’s schools are and what is being done to protect students and staff.
Schools across B.C. conduct regular drills for earthquakes, fire and lockdowns and the Ministry of Education recommends that schools have two lockdown drills per year.
However, one expert told Global News that the current messaging on how to respond during an active shooting incident may not be the most effective approach to the situation.
Chris Grollnek is a U.S.-based expert on active shooter threats.
He said that since the turn of the century, starting with Columbine High School, the response to mass shootings in schools has primarily focused on the wrong things.
Get breaking National news
“Run, hide and fight,” he argues, is not a successful strategy.
“Hiding under a desk that’s not ballistic is doing nothing. And most of the active shooters that happen don’t go through doors. They shoot through them. So it’s time to take a look at hardening those doors.”
B.C.’s Ministry of Education has a manual on dealing with emergencies in B.C schools.
Like earthquakes, students are taught to take cover during a lockdown, but Grollnek questions if that is the best advice.
“The type of reality we’re using for active shooter drills, do they work?” he said.
“We don’t really know and the jury’s kind of out per se, however, I do know the majority of mental health professionals have signed many different petitions not to carry out this type of training because we’re scarring the children in a very low-probability event, but it has high-impact consequences.”
While mass school shootings are rare in Canada, since 1999, there have been more than 24 reported gun incidents at or around schools nationwide.
How to balance that risk with public safety is something officials say they’ll be taking a closer look at in the coming weeks.
- ‘Crippling’: Sechelt could lose 300 temporary foreign workers, mayor says
- Details about the FIFA World Cup Fan Zone in Vancouver released
- ‘No reason to kill our parents’: Closing arguments heard in B.C. double murder trial
- Veteran paramedic testifies he couldn’t tell Myles Gray’s ethnicity due to bruising
How did he get in school in the first place? He had dropped out FOUR years previous and was allowed to just waltz back in the door carrying a gun without being spotted?!
No , don’t fight, cause the attacker will be the victim now !
This is a very tricky subject. We pay extremely high taxes in this nation, why cant we afford an armed officer in every school. Maybe a trained to be effective custodian on shift, trained by law enforcement or the military. This isnt the correct answer, though. Encouraging discussions with students and supporting a more caring and inclusive environment can go along way. You cannot legislate evil out of existence, but you can be more aware of what people are going through. We need more teachers, we need to pay them better to create incentives for them to come. They need to be trained in having no bias around kids, so no group feels marginalized, and they need to do better at combating bullying. Social media creates neglected children. There seems to be a chronic devaluing of human life these days with all the division, and a severe lack of accountability on the governments part, this needs to change. But they will just blame objects or culture and pass some laws and restrictions and call it a day. Sorry if what I said is offensive to anyone, not my goal. I want all of our children to thrive, not just my own.
Im happy to see the shooter was female. We need more diversity in school shootings.
Safety of our schools??? How about mental health of vulnerable children guided by uninformed school officials
Taking advice from Americans in what to do about school shootings is the last place any country should look for advice.
Mental illness is a sickness that needs to be dealt with more seriously if we want to continue living in a free society
My concern as it’s always been is this- as an adult I can walk into my children’s school at any point during the day through an unlocked, unmonitored door. Often other doors are propped open. When children are inside the school, to enter we should need to ring in and be allowed entry. A simple thing, and it may only protect them inside those walls, but one easy step.
Where are the ret ards that said police liaison officers in schools are a bad idea?