Questions About Arming School Staff
There is a need for collaborative planning between schools and their community public safety groups, using Emergency Management principles.
We want to amplify David Reidman’s commentary on announcements of various U.S. states allowing staff to be armed on campus, from an Emergency Management perspective. Speaking neither in favor nor against the measure, district officials still need to follow – and modify – their POETE process for the before, during, and after the use of force (weapons) by school staff. Just changing a law will not change the plans, organization (staff who does what), equipment, training, or exercising of all the prior elements. Let’s take just a few of the Risk Management elements already mentioned – if these apply to your school system now, have you adjusted your POETE?
- Planning: The use of force continuum and how it applies to non-sworn officials on campus (faculty, staff, rangers, marshals, private armed guards, etc.) – How have your steady-state and ‘disaster-state’ plans (emergency response, recovery, etc.) changed? Are these folks incorporated into the event planning for sports and theatrical events on campus, where crowds of non-students will be a normal occurrence? Are there expectations that any of them will respond to an event on campus, if not already there? Who mobilizes them? Is there a unified communications systems plan, between school officials – including these now armed officials – and public safety groups in the community (police, fire, EMS, etc.)? Are their specific missions spelled out for incidents other than active assailants?
- Organizing: Who are the people designated to be armed? What is their insurance liability coverage for these missions? How are they vetted for this role (physical, mental, medical clearances, etc.)? Are they qualified (this is very different from trained)?
- Equipping: What equipment will they be using? Is it only their own weapons? Can they pick and choose which ones? Who pays for practice (including range time, shoot house time, etc.), bullets, holsters/belts/supplies, etc.? Will they be issued body armor? Radios? Any less-lethal equipment? Collapsable batons? Pepper Spray? Stun Guns? Handcuffs? Badges?
- Training: There are voluminous elements of training – in my opinion, even more than what a traditional law enforcement officer would initially receive from a police academy on use of their service gun, especially since that is not the only tool in their toolbox, so to speak. One element is the daily interaction between the public and a police officer. Today’s well-trained officer never lets their guard down – everyone is a potential threat actor.[1] Can school administrators function in this environment? Can teachers do the same? Is your district adding bleeding control training – including the use of tourniquets, chest seals, and bullet wound packing – into their in-service days, for staff? They should.
- And finally Exercising: Has your district reviewed and revised its multi-year training and exercising program collaboratively with their respective jurisdictional community-based public safety groups? In our prior posts and webinars, we have described the HSEEP program for building, running, and evaluating all types of exercises – that model has a template for both a workshop to develop an Integrated Preparedness Plan Program Management, which includes a large section on collaborating on a multiyear schedule of preparedness activities which align to each of the POETE elements and a template for that work, as well. . We have added a free download for these (courtesy of FEMA) at our exercise training store. As we have said before, your district should be directly involved in the planning of any type of emergency/incident training or exercising involving your sites, systems, staff, students, etc. These are the blueprints for the who, what, when, where, how and why, emergency management will be conducted at your schools. Your team is already in the game, you should be involved in the practices, gameplan design, etc. as well.
Barton Dunant (the for-profit organization which financially supports the CEMIR) continues to add both free use exercise templates and paid consulting for exercise implementation and evaluation. Visit Barton Dunant’s free Exercise Training Store at https://blog.bartondunant.com/ets/
o They have posted the above noted templates for collaboration in overall POETE design between your school district and your community’s public safety groups.
o They have also posted the slides from the free sample School Shooting Incident virtual table top to their store, as well.
o If you would like a customized version of this tabletop exercise delivered virtually for your school district, please click here for a cost-based consulting service for this.
[1] Krajewski, A. T., Worrall, J. L., & Scales, R. M. (2023). Threat Dynamics and Police Use of Force. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00224278231194711