History is replete with examples of conflicts in which the side cowering in fearful defense loses:
The Maginot Line. . .
“If you stay here you’ll die!” – every platoon commander, from Omaha Beach to Iwo Jima.
The French in Indo-China chose isolated islands of fortified installations culminating in Dien Bien Phu.
All three of these “strategies” are based on fear – something predators depend on and exult in.
“Your squad car is the target but you are the bulls-eye. If you are ambushed and immobilized, evacuate and get to cover.” – LAPD Officer Survival Training.
“The best way to keep casualties to a minimum in an artillery barrage [or in an ambush] is to charge through it.” – General George S. Patton
The point in these last two is that to survive someone has to be mentally prepared to take the offensive.
This should be written in stone – it will save lives: You can not conduct a successful defense from a static, immobile position against a determined, mobile threat. All you do is make yourself a target to be fired upon at will. Every perimeter can be breached. These examples are directly applicable to school defense. I will repeat myself until I see someone paying attention: School classrooms are death traps as long as they do not provide a means of escaping the kill zone or cone of death – the area in which the threat is able to focus his firepower. At least one Uvalde mother knew this instinctively by entering Rob Elementary, extracting her girls and saving their lives.
Schools turning “Turtle” is only a half measure that will not prevent other massacres. For those who’ve never played outside in an environment where there are turtles – I pity you. Children used to scout out fields and creeks looking for benign box turtles to keep as pets in cardboard boxes – until the turtle poop stink convinced mom to “escape” them back to nature. When threatened the turtle would instinctively draw his head and legs within his hard shell and wait. When it felt the threat was gone it would extend its head and legs and go about his day. This is what school administrators are now doing – the minimum, politically correct approach to school security. They are more like the ostrich who (allegedly) hides his head in the sand thinking the threat is gone as his ass is totally exposed. In this case it is the students who are exposed.
There are two ways to make Turtle Soup: 1. wait for the turtle to stick his head out and chop or shoot it off; or, 2. smash his hard shell with a sledgehammer. The analogy applies to Turtle Schools. The Uvalde shooter could easily have driven his truck into a wall of the school or made a forced entry by some other means. Few remember the Luby’s Restaurant shooter in Austin, Texas. Rage has no boundaries.
As long as there are human beings involved there will be vulnerabilities -weak spots- in protecting an immobile object like a school. The biggest threat is someone inside the target who, whether wittingly or unwittingly, conspires with or facilitates breaching the security measures. It could be any number of people: a staff member creating a convenience, a BFF doing a favor, a girl sneaking a boyfriend onto campus, a fellow gang member, an ideologically affiliated person identifying with the threat’s agenda, ad infinitum.
Asset protection is neither rocket science nor brain surgery. But it does require fundamental changes in thinking and behaving. It involves much more than locking doors, metal detectors, and “RSO”s.
First and foremost it requires a change in cultural attitude by all concerned – principals, teachers, and other school administrative staff. Considering the political bent of America’s public education system this is the hardest thing to change (and it probably won’t). Everyone in charge of the welfare of our children has to convince themselves that “I WILL NOT BE A VICTIM!” Without that determined will to survive, the billions spent on “education” will be even more wasted – in lives.
They should trust their gut instinct in identifying potential threats and have the courage to report it. The officials receiving the information have to have the courage to act. Both were missing in Uvalde. A study conducted by the University of Southern California concluded that most people’s first impressions about someone they meet for the first time are over 90% accurate. Having faith in your instincts is the first step to survival. That instinct is a gift from God encoded in our DNA – use it.
They should receive training in neuro-linguistic analysis – fancy words for observing both verbal and nonverbal indicators in human behavior that forewarn of danger. The Israelis use this nationwide – particularly at their airports. They haven’t had a plane hijacked since and even bus drivers have saved dozens of lives. A few tips like focusing on the eyes and hands of a stranger can prevent tragedy. Good teachers observe these every day.
They need to expand their area of spatial awareness and know the signals making their environment status go from Green to Yellow to Red – with the concomitant courage to act on it.
So, let’s say schools implement all the physical barriers, employ a mentally and physically qualified Resource School Officer and all the other well-known “hardening” techniques. Where’s the weak spot? Just like the French in Indochina who hunkered down in pillboxes, the VC struck at them on ingress and egress – and along the routes between. How do you protect our kids when they’re arriving and leaving school? A determined shooter, like any predator, simply redirects his efforts to where the prey are at their weakest. So, in addition to teachers and RSOs, do we arm bus drivers? Do we arm teachers and staff standing bus monitor duty? In my opinion, yes. Why not. Sadly, though, generally they are not the right kind of people with the required mind set, the physical ability nor the mental courage to take the required course of action.
This ignores the violence occurring on a daily basis within schools by students against their fellow students and teachers. Things have only gotten worse since Blackboard Jungle. There are legitimate reasons why 1.2 million kids have left public education in the last few years. We could save a lot of taxpayer money – and lives in so many ways – by abolishing the Department of Education and restoring the education of our children back to the local communities. In a very real sense, it would be like cutting the anchor off the leg of a drowning person.
So the massacres will continue until the schools and their communities are “hardened” by the appropriate change in cultural attitude – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The prospects are not promising.
