Targeted School Violence Incidencesâ Recognizing
Introduction
Using the unit readings and other Internet resources, you will be researching and discussing the singular component that all threat assessment professionals agree holds the greatest importance and provides the best chance for interruption and mitigation of targeted school violence incidences—recognizing the signs missed. Studies and research by the USSS NTAC and threat assessment professionals have all discovered that in far more than 90 percent of all incidents of targeted mass violence or murder, whether the target was a school or otherwise, the offender made their intentions known to others prior to the commission of the actual event but that these warning signs were either missed or ignored due to a number of other factors (Pollack, Modzeleski, & Rooney 2008).
You may find yourself asking, “How could someone miss, ignore, or not report these signs to proper authorities who may have been able to prevent the event from occurring?”
This discussion deals with the concepts of leakage and injustice collecting. You will review the findings of three threat assessment professionals tasked with reviewing and dissecting the most highly protected (and recently destroyed) collections of leakage evidence discovered and collected. The event is the CHS tragedy and the evidence is the infamous basement tapes. The basement tapes were a collection of videotapes prepared by both of the offenders that committed the targeted attack in the CHS on April 20, 1999. The offenders began making these recordings approximately 3 months prior to the attack on CHS and continued until the final recordings on the morning of the attack. These tapes were made and kept in the basement of one of the offender’s homes, only to be discovered during a post-event search of the residence. The findings you will be reviewing are presented by FBI’s Dr. Mary Ellen O’Toole (SSA FBI BAU) and Ronald F. Tunkel (SSA BATF) in the 2006 report on Columbine basement tapes (Columbine Basement Tapes Report by FBI), and psychologist Dr. Peter Langman’s transcript of the tapes (Transcript of the Columbine ‘Basement Tapes’). Both are part of the unit readings.
Note: Please notice that we are not making any reference to the names of any of the offenders who committed any of the real-life acts of targeted school violence we will be studying, although you will see names in some of the reference materials. The avoidance of names is intentional because the focus of this course is not on who committed the acts but on recognizing, reporting, and mitigating future acts of targeted school violence by studying real-world acts of violence that were successfully completed and the data collected from these incidences that can assist us in mitigating future attacks.
Instructions
In your main post:
- Describe sources of evidence reviewers used to complete their reports.
- Identify the intrinsic value that a threat assessment professional has lost as a result of the destruction of the Columbine basement tapes.
- Illustrate evidence of contagion of violence discovered by the reviewers.
- Discuss whether the Court’s ruling that sealing the evidence on the basement tapes away from the public, public review, or public inspection was prudent.
Discussion Objectives
The competencies addressed in this discussion are supported by discussion objectives, as follows:
- Competency 2: Explore offender-related communications relative to school violence pre-event, during the event, and post-event.
- Describe sources of evidence reviewers used to complete their reports.
- Identify the intrinsic value that a threat assessment professional has lost as a result of the destruction of the Columbine basement tapes.
- Competency 3: Characterize contagion of violence.
- Illustrate evidence of contagion of violence discovered by the reviewers.
- Discuss whether the Court’s ruling that sealing the evidence on the basement tapes away from the public, public review, or public inspection was prudent.