The unnamed student from Ontario Christian High School who was brave enough to come forward and "say something", the school administrators, and the Ontario Police who responded to this threat are all heroes!...period.
Security and safety happens along a continuum in terms of how any school or organization should prepare and plan. Prevention is on the left of any undesired incident (the "boom") and incident response & recovery is on the far right of the undesired incident. In between these points and along the continuum of a comprehensive security and safety program are all of the other necessary administrative, physical and technical "security" controls, mental health resources, intelligence/information gathering & analysis, investigations, SRO's, etc. This story highlights the importance of that "left of boom" importance of prevention and intervention first.
A comprehensive security/safety and wellness program must engage the entire school or workplace community and encourage those with any concerns regardless of how trivial to report these via a variety of offered incident reporting methods, to include anonymously if desired. All reports of concerning behavior or security/safety incidents must be analyzed as part of a continuous process of information analysis and investigation. The more we perfect this early process "left of boom", the less likely we will need to utilize all the other required resources "right of boom", which means bad things unfortunately happened...
A united community is better than a divided community! Don't be afraid to say something. Stay safe!
Comments