Ever since the Parkland school shooting on Valentine’s Day, media pundits and politicians of all stripes have spewed forth an avalanche of disparate explanations for and radical solutions to this most recent manifestation of what CNN has listed as the 34 “deadliest mass shootings in United States history since 1949.”
The explanations have ranged from the collapse of American family values to the failure of our law-enforcement and mental health services; the solutions, from government confiscation of all firearms to the arming of classroom teachers. None of these explanations are adequate, and none of these solutions will solve the problem. Even the modest suggestion of raising the age at which someone can purchase a gun from 18 to 21 will do little to reduce the number of mass shootings. As for the widely disseminated advice “If you see something, say something,” law enforcement agencies at all levels of government too often ignore citizen reports of even the most obvious signs that someone may be a potential mass shooter.
In the case of Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old who killed 17 people on Feb. 14, National Public Radio (NPR) has reported that “When Cruz was just 10 years old, his mother called the police to the house. That call in 2008 was the first of dozens of times over the next decade she would summon law enforcement, often for help keeping her sons under control.”
NPR also notes that “The Florida Department of Children and Families became involved with Cruz in late 2016 after he began cutting himself and posting images of the self-harm on Snapchat….The report also details a range of conditions with which Cruz was diagnosed, including depression. Ultimately, FDCF concluded he was ‘not a risk to harm himself or others.’”
It is the failed response of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to a Jan. 5 call about Cruz on its public access line, however, that is most alarming.
According to USA Today: “‘Under established protocols,’ the FBI said, ‘the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken….The information was not provided to the Miami field office, and no further investigation was conducted at that time.”
Common sense should tell us the best way to minimize the chance of another school shooting is to spot and stop the shooter before he shoots. In Jefferson County, Colorado, where the Columbine massacre took place in 1999, the district’s security chief, John McDonald, is now trying to do precisely that.
In past years, many other school districts nationwide have set up teams of school officials, mental health workers and police to investigate threats of school violence, find help for troubled students and, when necessary, turn them over to law enforcement authorities. McDonald’s district goes further by tracking troubled students even after they have left school.
“Under the program,” McDonald explains, “the school district’s case managers are currently keeping track of 17 former students…in addition to 168 current students. Parents and students agree to this arrangement, signing a contract and waivers so the school district’s case managers can talk with their doctors and therapists. In other cases, it is a condition of probation handed down by a judge.”
Jefferson County’s strategy may be a step further, but in a district with 86,000 students a program that tracks only 185, most of whom are “already out of the barn” is a pretty meager corralling effort. Besides, Jefferson County puts mostly professional adults in charge. The point is that, even in the Jefferson County school district, Nikolas Cruz would have been beyond the tracking scope of the “professional adults.” If you really want to find out what’s going on in a middle school or high school student’s head. you’ve got to get his or her peers involved.
That’s why Robert L. Woodson’s approach to this challenge offers a better alternative. As Dr. Woodson points out in a recent Wall Street Journal column, “After the 1999 killings at Columbine, the Department of Education and the Secret Service investigated 37 targeted school shootings and school attacks from 1970 to 2000 to determine if there was a common profile. There wasn’t. What most of the perpetrators did have in common, though, was that they had told someone in their social network what they were going to do.”
Woodson notes that this pattern of behavior is “really an early-warning system, similar to an idea my organization has developed called ‘Violence Free Zones’—neighborhood networks that prevent violent attacks before they happen.”
Here’s how the program works: “Local not-for-profits selected by the Woodson Center hire young adults from the community as youth advisers…They circulate in lunch rooms, detention rooms and halls, and they tutor students… When a student smuggles a gun past school security, a youth adviser is alerted and the youngster is quietly removed from the premises and arrested, all without the school going on lockdown.”
Critics may say this sounds like something out of Orwell’s “1984”—turning neighbors into spies. But it’s surely no more bizarre and expansive than arming classroom school teachers or forcing congress to repeal the Second Amendment?
The key to understanding Dr. Woodson’s proposal is in the parable of the prodigal son. (Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32). Secular social justice systems designed and staffed by salaried and licensed “professionals” (such as local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, child psychologists and teachers unions) don’t work because they leave God out of the picture. As one online respondent to Woodson’s article has asked, “What if we raised children to understand that there is a God, He loves them unconditionally, and He has some guidance, some purpose for their lives?”

Bruce Robinson is a writer and former Benicia resident.

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