According to an analysis by the New York Times, in the three weeks following the Apalachee (Georgia) High School shooting that claimed the lives of two students and two teachers, more than 700 children and teens were arrested for allegedly communicating threats against schools in at least 45 states. There are indications that law enforcement officers contacted the alleged Apalachee school shooter in May 2023 to investigate allegations that he had posted school threats to social media. Their investigation was inconclusive.

Imagine This Scenario

At midnight, dispatch is contacted by the state’s school safety tip line. A 17-year-old local high school student has posted several pictures of himself on social media. The photos show him holding a semiautomatic pistol with captions indicating that he plans on shooting up the school during first period in the morning. The tip line has not been able to determine if the pictures are stock photos or originals.

The student lives in your jurisdiction, and you are dispatched to do a knock and talk to ascertain if this is a credible threat. Backup is not readily available. How are you going to handle this call?

Our first recommendation would be to slow things down, if possible. Can dispatch transmit the photos to you? What other questions do you want to try to answer before you arrive on scene? Have we had previous contact with this person? Have we been to this address before? If so, what for? Do we have a record of firearms being in this house?

You arrive at the residence and contact the student and his dad. The parents recently divorced. This is the one week a month the student lives with his dad.

The dad consents to a search of his son’s room and you locate the firearm shown in the photos, along with 100 rounds of ammunition. Dad states he thought the gun was locked in a gun safe. The student denies he was really planning on attacking his school. His intent was to scare some older students who have been bullying him off and on since middle school. Dad was vaguely aware of the bullying, but didn’t realize it was as severe as his son is now admitting.

Having established that this student has the means and would have the opportunity to carry out an act of targeted school violence, as well as a possible motive, what questions do you want to ask to ascertain his true intent?

Even if your investigation reveals with certainty that this student did not actually intend to shoot up his school, are you concerned that he may be experiencing a mental health crisis? What questions do you want to ask to figure out if he needs immediate help?

The Preliminary Law Enforcement Investigation Checklist: Threat of Imminent School Violence was developed to simplify, to the extent possible, a complex inquiry to determine whether a threat of school violence is credible. The checklist is based on guidance from the U.S. Secret Service, National Threat Assessment Center. It was developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) through a grant to the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) to create and disseminate the Project Unite: Four Integrated Systems for Violence Prevention training initiative in collaboration with Safe and Sound Schools, the National Policing Institute, the I Love U Guys Foundation, and the University of Colorado Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence.

In using the checklist, it is not necessary to answer every question it poses, and there is no right number of “yes” answers. It is designed to help you cover the critical bases needed to determine if a threat of targeted school violence is credible and imminent and if crisis intervention is needed for the person presenting the threat.

Before using the checklist for the first time, patrol and school resource officers are encouraged to review the Additional Notes and Considerations included with it. This portion of the checklist describes action steps you may want to consider depending on the outcome of your investigation. It also asks a rhetorical question: by starting with the Situational Concerns questions related to the student’s well-being, will I be able to build the rapport and trust needed to get honest answers to the Imminent Safety Concerns questions?

Conclusion

When dealing with complex situations like the investigation of a school threat, Dr. Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, would suggest that we face three challenges: faulty memory, distractions, and the inclination to skip important but seemingly trivial steps. None of us are going to remember all the questions that need to be asked and answered to determine with a high degree of certainty whether a school threat is credible. Also, virtually all our work in law enforcement involves continuous distractions, including those associated with maintaining officer safety and calls waiting for service. When the clock is ticking toward the first bell of the school day, skipping steps may seem necessary. Checklists remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit.

The Checklist is designated Law Enforcement Sensitive. To request an electronic copy, please contact the COPS Office Response Center at AskCOPSRC@usdoj.gov.

This article is partially reprinted from an article in the Winter 2021 Journal of School Safety.

Jeff Allison
Special Adviser
NASRO

Mo Canady
Executive Director
NASRO

Michele Gay
Executive Director and Cofounder
Safe and Sound Schools

Susan Payne
30-year Law Enforcement Veteran
Former Executive Director and Founder
Safe2Tell

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