Security & Investigation Services Directory

Hiring the Right Private Investigator

By Danny Smith

You’ve decided to consult with a private investigator, but you’re uncertain how to select the right one – someone you can trust with your valued personal information and hard-earned money, not to mention personal problems. There are several important considerations. More…

Violence and Terrorism in our Schools: Get Informed, Get Involved.

By Joe Bezotte

With my wife as a High school Counselor in a large public school and one daughter currently attending school, I have a vested interest in the safety and security of schools.  It is not hard to identify school violence as a serious issue.  Watching the news for a single day will probably bring anyone up to date.  As a security consultant I believe the number one fault which afflicts school security programs is complacency.  It is my sincere hope and prayer that this fault is brought to light and replaced with a sense of urgency before something happens and it then becomes a reactionary issue.  Lets look at some information about school violence and terrorism related intelligence.

    We could go back in history and find violence occurred in schools long before the Columbine incident in Littleton Colorado, but let’s start there.  According to School Security.org there have been 107 shooting related deaths from 1999 to present.  There have also been 140 deaths in schools due to stabbings, fights, suicides or other violent means.   As serious and alarming as that figure may sound, I believe it is an underreported event.  Tragically, one must also consider the survivors of those events who will suffer cognitively from their harrowing experience.

    Terrorism in schools is something very few people talk about, I believe, due to a false sense of security due to lack of information and perception of no current activity.  Guess what? There is activity:

• Terrorists groups such as Al-Qaeda have stated they have the right to kill two million American children.
• Terrorists have been video-taped practicing school takeovers and issuing commands in English.
• Islamic religious literature condones killing children if it is for the “general good”.
• A practice session has already been conducted out in Beslan, Russia. 172 children were killed.

Middle schools without a police presence are prime targets.  The reasoning behind this is that girls this age are big enough to assault and rape but students are not big or strong enough to fight back. Not only have preparations for acts of violence in schools begun, but terrorist organizations are also actively recruiting school age children.  This is accomplished in many ways and forms but is predominantly through the internet.  Although many internet websites have taken steps to identify and eliminate this type of action it is extremely difficult to accomplish.

    Recently, my wife told me how excited she was about an event called “See you at the Pole” where on a specific day at a specific time, children and staff at schools around the country would meet at the flagpole at their school to pray.  By the way, in 1998, over 3 million students in all 50 U.S. states and in over 20 other countries met at their school flagpole for prayer, this is a large event.  I asked my wife if she had or could ask the school resource officer to (at the least) check out the area and the perimeter for people or items of suspicious nature.  She could not have been more surprised by my question.  I explained to her what it would look like if terrorists (or anyone for that matter) were to target these schools and coordinate a mass bombing or shooting at these locations killing Christian Americans as they prayed under the American flag.  She was shocked at the premise but saw the reasoning behind my concern.  And this is the wife of a Security Consultant!  I may be sleeping on the couch for a while if she reads this but I believe it illustrates my point as to the level of naivety of our society.  It is time for us to get informed and get involved!  Contact your children’s school(s) and ask what measures are in place, what precautions are being taken and what response plans are implemented.  Monitor your children’s computer and web activities; warn them about predators and otherwise suspicious individuals on the internet.  Talk to your children about what to do if found in a dangerous situation at school…get informed and get involved.

With this article I hope and pray that I may have widened some eyes and prompted, even a little, action.  No one will do it for us; we need to do it for our children, God bless.

Websites to help get informed:

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/05/17/myspace-is-terrorist-recruiting-ground

http://www.keepschoolssafe.org

http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/school_violence.html