Preventing another Columbine

In 1999, two students at Columbine High School in Colorado shot and killed 12 students and one teacher, and injured 21 others. They then committed suicide.

It was in the wake of this tragedy and many others like it that school boards, police services and community organizations began signing agreements to share information with each other to determine if troubled youths pose a risk to the community.

A similar agreement, entitled the Community Threat Assessment Protocol, was signed in the Greater Sudbury March 26.

The document was signed by Greater Sudbury Police, all four local school boards, the two local colleges, Health Sciences North, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services' probation office, the Child and Family Centre and the Sudbury-Manitoulin Children's Aid Society.

Kevin Cameron, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response, has provided training for representatives of each organization.

He gives the example of a teacher overhearing a student making a threat at school. Although the teacher tells the principal about it, neither of them know that the student had interacted with the police over the weekend, and they don't take that seriously.

With the protocol in place, organizations are better able to “connect the dots,” and figure out what's actually going on, Cameron said.

“Where somebody engages in clear threats or possession of weapons or something like that, it will automatically activate the protocol,” he said. “It will create an automatic pipeline for the signees to determine whether or not they have information about the particular youth.”

Then the involved organizations can plan an intervention to help the youth, he said.

Insp. Bob Keetch of the Greater Sudbury Police said the protocol is a “tremendous step” for the city.

“All of us bringing our information on the individuals, and assessing the situation, only increases the level of safety, and decreases the level of risk that individuals pose,” he said. “It just speaks to the quality relationships that our organizations have within this community.”

Catherine McCullough, director of education with the Sudbury Catholic District School Board, said there's incidents at every school which may lead to violence.

The idea is to be proactive in identifying and de-escalating a situation before it turns into a full-blown crisis, she said. Being able to work with other organizations will also help, McCullough said.

“If we have an incident in one of our schools, and then we know that the student might be receiving service from one of the other organizations, then we're able to have that seemless transition or communication, as opposed to being silent on it.”

McCullough said the school board has a threat assessment steering committee whose members go to schools whenever threats are made at a school. If necessary, that committee then brings in other organizations to provide more information.

Robert Mayer, superindendent of education for Conseil scolaire catholique du nouvel-Ontario, said the protocol is an important tool for school boards.

He said there have been incidents where threats have been made at his board's schools.

“Have they escalated up to a very high level?” he said. “I would say no. Can these things happen? Definitely, yes. We want to work with our partners, and we want to train our staff to react properly, and prevent those things from happening to an individual or group or anything like that.”

Thomas Smith, clinical manager of Health Sciences North's crisis intervention program, said he and his colleagues might be called in to assess a student to see if they “may have some ideas or thoughts about harm to themselves or others.”

The threat assessment protocol “is a great idea,” he said.

“The community is saying that they want to know that all the pieces of the pie are sharing information, working together, so we're not missing things we shouldn't miss,” he said.

Posted by Arron Pickard