Date: 09/22/2015
Final
Public Comment
SCHOOL SAFETY AND YOUTH IN CRISIS
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01:25 PM -- Public Comment
The committee came back to order. Dr. David Benke, representing himself, thanked the committee for its work and spoke about his experiences as a teacher at Deer Creek Middle School where a shooter killed two of his students. He told the committee that shootings can happen at even the best schools. He reviewed his studies of school security and said that schools should detect threats, defuse them, deter them, and defend themselves. He spoke about detecting at-risk students and explained that at Deer Creek, the perpetrator had attended the school 18 years before. He discussed the importance of deterrence through hardening the target and defending children. He framed his comments as 12 questions:
1. Should there be an office for school security equivalent to a fire marshal, with the power to fine an institution for noncompliance with regulations?
2. Should schools be required to keep construction details on file for law enforcement access?
3. Should schools etch room numbers into exterior windows?
4. Should steps be taken to create reciprocal agreements between news organizations and law enforcement agencies that would allow law enforcement to use private helicopters to deliver officers to emergency sites?
5. Should schools be required to mark room numbers on roofs?
6. Should school personnel rethink policy with regard to evacuation in the event of a bomb threat?
7. Should schools be required to have armed security personnel?
8 Should school personnel be required to close and lock exterior doors during the school day? Should portable classrooms be discouraged, or secured, and should there be only one entry point into every school?
9. Should off-duty officers and faculty with concealed carry permits be allowed to carry weapons on school grounds?
10. Should schools be required to do yearly lock-down drills? Dr. Benke said that 48 percent of Colorado schools do not currently do such drills.
11. Should the state commit to putting an armed SRO in every school?
12. Should schools be required to post the SRP and train staff and students in their implementation?
Dr. Benke gave four recommendations to the committee, which he said would cost nothing to implement:
1. Self defense, or school security, including detection and defusion of at-risk students, should be part of teacher training at every university;
2. Teachers should be able to use self defense, school security, and first aid courses for certification renewal;
3. Those same courses should be offered as teacher continuing education courses; and
4. Someone who is diagnosed with a mental illness that is treatable with medication and is prescribed that medication should not be eligible for the insanity defense if he or she decides to stop taking the medication without a doctor's consent.
Dr. Benke offered closing remarks and urged the committee to consider his recommendations.