School Shooting Response Paper

On December 14, 2012, a suspected 20 year old man named Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and shot dead 20 children and 6 teachers and staff (Zak, 2014). There were various checks in place to prevent such a situation from taking place. Some of these worked while others failed and contributed to the death of these people. On arrival of the police five minutes later, the suspect committed suicide. This situation left a lot of questions unanswered. This paper analyzes the various roles the human service delivery members played in response to this incident.

Law Enforcement

            The law enforcement arrived at the scene of the crime about 4 minutes after the shooting was reported. Rep-orts show that the first entry into the school was however made six minutes after the arrival. According to reports by CNN (2013), the shooter had committed suicide five minutes upon arrival after the police arrived. With this in mind, it is likely that the police arrived on site four minutes after the first shootout had been made. Their arrival helped to end the chaos and the suspect committed suicide in about one minute. At this point, the shooting was reported to have stopped. A report by the police further indicates that the police stayed outside the school for a further five minutes in anticipation that there may be more than one shooter (Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, 2013).

While the initial response was first, the act of engaging the police took longer than would be expected. While the police had arrived in four minutes, they took close to six minutes before entering the scene of crime. At this point, the suspect had committed suicide five minutes earlier. According to the Connecticut police Association Report (2013), the suspects only stop shooting only after they are engaged. This information required the police to try and engage the suspect as soon as they arrived. Other measures which took close to six minutes would have been checked by other means.

School officials and staff Response

While no information about the timing is available, there is evidence to show various things about the shooting. First, there were calls to the police within the first five minutes. Different sources provide different timings for the length of time it took the school to respond to the shooting (Zak, 2014). All available reports indicate that six staff and officials were shot and killed during the incident. While only two classes were entered by the perpetrator, the number of teachers who got directly involved in the incident was more than six. This shows that the teachers made a step to lower the impact of the incident by intervening. The only problem was that they did not have sufficient mechanism of reacting to the situation.

There are opinions that teachers should be armed. Other opinions suggest that schools be guarded by armed personnel. Both options would have been viable in this scenario. The only problem is with securing the gun when the school is in peace. The gun poses a threat to the security of the school especially if the teacher carries their gun on their person. Securing the gun in an office makes the gun unusable. The guns should be allowed to people who are given the role of guarding the security of the school. If this had been the case, the shooter would have been neutralized at the point of entry when he was identified as a threat. In this case, the scenario would have been avoided.

Emergency responders

Emergency medical technicians arrived at the scene promptly. The time of their arrival is unreported. According to one report however, while more than 20 EMTs were available for assistance, there was hardly anything they could do. In a report by Bowmer (2013), the EMTs waited for the police to allow them entry or to remove the victims from the scene for assistance. Unluckily, only two victims were brought out alive. This highly minimized the effect that their assistance could provide.

This scenario shows a scenario where gun response teams should combine to offer emergency medical assistance to the victims of crime. In the above case, the EMTs would have played a more important role if they were also able to handle guns and help in engaging the perpetrator sooner then was done. The one minute difference from the arrival of the police to the suicide of the perpetrator would have been minimized. Moreover, the time between arrival and entry would have been lowered as some responders would have been charged with the role of securing the area while others would have attempted to quell the shooting.

Coroner’s Response

The coroner released an autopsy report of all people killed by December 16^th, 2012. The reports were released in only two days despite the big number of victims involved. The 26 victims of the massacre were determined to have yielded to gunshot wounds (Connecticut police Association, 2013). It further indicated that one of the guns that had been obtained from the scene of crime had been used to kill them. The perpetrator was determined o have been killed by a self-inflicted wound on the head. The mother who had also been killed earlier in the day was determined to have been killed of multiple gunshots to the head. The coroner acted with speed. This way, he provided information that would aid in investigation into the killings.

The Clergy

Immediately after the killings, various churches came together to offer counseling and prayer for the deceased. On the same day, there were reports of prayers being held in various churches in Newtown. The Catholic Church at Lima, for example, was reported to have various priests who met on the evening of the killing to offer assistance and prayer to the families of the victims (Kaleem, 2014). This is a very good sign from the church. While it may be possible for such arrangements to be made sooner, it was still a sign of readiness to deal with similar situations.

Policies

This scenario depicts a weakness in gun laws. The fact that guns are legal in the US contributed to the incident. If the perpetrator did not have access to the weapons, it is possible that the incident would not have succeeded. The scenario was further supported by the fact that the crime prevention units were not sufficiently alert. According to various reports, the perpetrator was found to have been studying on various issues surrounding the issue (Sanchez, 2013; Connecticut police Association, 2013). He had been studying on school shootings; had written various poems and stories about homicides and was a fan of various games that involve intense violence. With proper intelligence, these concepts would have been captured earlier and the intelligence bodies helped in prevention of the massacre.

In conclusion, various concepts are evident from the report. The police were alert enough in terms of response. They arrived at the scene within four minutes after the killings had been reported. Other bodies were similarly alert. They provided their respective response measures to prevent the massacre from continuing. Various measures may however need to be improved to ensure that response mechanisms are more effective. There is a need for gun control for example. There are also needs to improve the manner in which the police approach shootouts to ensure that the shooting ends more promptly.

References

Connecticut police Association (2013). Newtown Police Response to Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting.

Kaleem, J. (2014). Vigils Planned In Response To Sandy Hook Shootings. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 8 November 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/prayer-vigil-school-shooting-newtown-connecticut_n_2302637.html

Sanchez, R. (2013). Conn. police release final report on Newtown school shooting. CNN. Retrieved 8 November 2014, from http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/28/us/connecticut-shooting-documents/

Sedensky III, S., (2013). Report of the State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury on the Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 36 Yogananda Street, Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012

Zak, D. (2014). Newtown school shooting’s first responders deal with searing memories. Washington Post. Retrieved 8 November 2014, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/newtown-school-shootings-first-responders-deal-with-searing-memories/2012/12/30/2ac5ba5e-5135-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_story.html

Bowmer, R. (2012). Utah teachers get free gun training in response to Newtown shooting. NBC News. Retrieved 8 November 2014, from http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/28/16206006-utah-teachers-get-free-gun-training-in-response-to-newtown-shooting