Weapon Detectors Won't Stop Planned Attacks, Warns K-12 School Shooting Database Founder

While schools are spending millions of dollars on weapons detectors, a foremost school shooting expert told IPVM that they won’t stop planned shootings.

Furthermore, weapons detectors actually make conditions worse by wasting resources and increasing safety risks for school staff.

See our analysis of the database and the collection methodology: K-12 School Shooting Database Examined

In this report, based on an interview with K-12 School Shooting Database founder David Riedman, the following topics are examined:

• Why weapons detectors won't stop planned attacks
• How weapons detectors make situations worse
• Weapons detection alerts increase risks for school staff
• Wasting resources on weapons detectors
• Recommendations to school officials
• No benefits to using weapons detectors in schools

Won't Stop Planned Attacks

Riedman told IPVM that metal/weapons detection systems won't stop planned attacks, as these shooters will shoot through a checkpoint.

I think the the entryway detectors have a lot of limitations, and actually create some new vulnerabilities of their own. If you're thinking about a worst case scenario with a planned attack an entryway detector is not going to stop somebody from committing a planned attack. They're going to shoot their way through that checkpoint.

But even worse, it's creating a choke point where you in some cases have hundreds of students lined up every morning waiting to go through that entryway detector.

Riedman cited several examples:

And there have been multiple planned attacks that occurred right when school was starting, including three weeks before Parkland in Marshall County, Kentucky. There was a student who shot 20 people in the entryway to the school right before the school was opening. There was a student killed in Arlington, Texas this year, waiting for the front doors to open so your entryway detector doesn't prevent your worst case scenario and actually creates a bigger vulnerability for your worst case scenario.

Video of a deployment of Evolv Express, a 'weapons detector' increasingly used by public schools districts (1, 2,3,4,5,6), shows that not only are lines of students visible, but also clusters of staff conducting screening in the entryways:

Making Situations Worse

Riedman went on to assert that metal/weapons detection can make situations worse by creating lines of students waiting to be screened as well as a student using a gun/knife in a panicked or impulsive manner after being confronted by security:

In terms of the entryway detection, potentially making situations worse, is not a viable solution. So you're creating a new vulnerability with students lined up. You're creating a new situation where a student that has a gun or knife being confronted by security being detected, might spur them into a moment of panic where they pull it and start firing or swinging the knife when they wouldn't have otherwise.

Furthermore, Riedman noted the concern of creating a false sense of security.

Or you create a false sense of security that there's not a weapon inside the school. So I think all three of those are more harmful scenarios than not having the detector at all.

Weapons Detection Alerts Increase Risks for School Staff

When asked about weapons screening that emphasizes moving students quickly through a system, Riedman noted this creates risk for staff, who are often tasked with secondary screenings:

The other question that comes with that, then is if you're moving people through quickly, you have the issue that you have in a transit system or an airport or so on where if you get a weapons detection - what do you do? And if you have students rapidly funneling through an automatic detector, and it gets an alert for somebody.

Then there needs to be separate trained staff that are able to immediately respond and isolate that person before they potentially pull out a weapon. And what we know is when untrained staff are faced with a weapon, you can have really dangerous circumstances.

In highlighting this concern, Riedman noted a shooting this year in Denver where a student shot two administrators during a search:

So at Denver East High this year, there was a student who was on a security plan where he needed to be searched each day. And when two untrained administrators had to do the search, he pulled out the gun and he shot both of them and critically wounded both of them.

Wasting Resources

Many schools are spending millions of dollars on these detection systems. For example, public schools in Louisville, KY are poised to spend $17M. Given the concerns about the effectiveness of these systems, IPVM asked what schools should do instead.

Riedman pointed to three recommendations. First, giving free gun locks to parents:

Your number one thing is give free gun locks to every single parent on back to school night, because overall, if guns are locked and secured in the home then teenagers and elementary school kids can't end up with those guns in the school. So the number one thing is there needs to be more education on parents and relatives and friends about making sure that kids don't get guns and that is a low hanging fruit. And a low cost piece. [empahsis added]

Second, investing in Crisis Intervention Programs:

The other point that the data shows from both planned attacks and from fights that escalate or suicides or domestics that turned violent is there are warning signs before that and so we need to have education for students and staff around the warning signs that somebody may be on this escalating path to violence that somebody might be experiencing a crisis and Crisis Intervention Programs and crisis intervention training is another very low cost item where you don't need a licensed counselor to initiate a crisis intervention effort. You just need a friend a family member or a teacher or a relative to understand that somebody's having a problem and then have a process to escalate those concerns and get that person connected with other resources. I think that can prevent nearly every school shooting or even a lot of fights that escalate into a shooting and it can also help with suicide self harm. Abuse, all the other issues that we know teenagers and children are dealing with so that public education around gun locks and suicide prevention and crisis intervention are are huge things that are both extremely low cost. [emphasis added]

Third, schools should tailor plans toward a variety of scenarios, not just lockdowns (which he states are effective for only a minority of school shooting scenarios):

And then the third piece is that schools have been doing this kind of lockdown for a unknown dangerous person coming onto your campus with a rifle and busting into a classroom and shooting kids in the classroom. And that is a very rare scenario. Overall, it's almost always an insider who knows the security plan, knows how to bypass the plan, knows the layout of the building, and is going to a specific vulnerable point. And schools need to be thinking about tailoring their plans towards a variety of scenarios and being able to respond agilely when something happens, knowing whether there's a person shooting inside versus outside, knowing whether there's an isolated threat, person ongoing threat, and knowing where that is in your building, so that students that are immediately in danger can get away from it. And students that are further away can start putting locked doors or barriers or deciding whether they want to evacuate from there. And we've taken a one size fits all approach to something that's really a multifaceted, multi dimensional threat. [emphasis added]

Recommendations for Schools

Riedman contends that school officials should assess the 2400 incidents in the K-12 database and whether weapons detectors would address the most likely scenarios associated with school shootings. Notably, 70% of schools shootings occur outside of a school building:

What they should do is look through a sample of these 2400 incidents and see how many of them would be potentially prevented by entry point detection. So across this huge time period 70% of the shootings happen outside of the school building. So already 70% of your incidents are not going to be addressed at all by an entry point detection. And then how many of them occurred at later points in the school day because it's really labor intensive to set up your security checkpoint.[emphasis added]

Schools should also assess the timing of school shootings and if screening is practical throughout the day when students enter and leave.

Are you going to do your security checkpoint again, after lunch? And after recess and for after school activities, and for a school dance or for a community event at the school or for a sporting event or a basketball game or football game? And when you see the number of incidents that happen so, last year of 300 or so, shootings during the school year 58% of our 58 of them, were at sporting events. Does your $100,000 detector that's in the front hallway do anything for your most common scenario that occurred during the school day. [emphasis added]

Riedman notes the most common period for a shooting incident is during dismissal:

The most common time period was dismissal. So it's when students are leaving. And that can be a gun that somebody gets out of the parking lot, gets out of the bushes. You know somebody who's a suspended student who comes back to school because they know that people they're having an issue with are going to be there or they know the person that ratted on them and got them suspended is going to be leaving at dismissal where we need to look holistically and realize what the threat picture is like, what the types of scenarios are, and then you realize that a very, very small number of those would be mitigated by detecting a weapon, you know, at that entry at 8am.

No Benefits to Using Weapons Detectors

Considering the breadth of information and implications from the K-12 database, IPVM asked if there were any benefits to deploying weapons detectors in schools, Riedman, stated no:

In my opinion, no. I think a school has too many doors, has too big a perimeter, has too many people coming in and out. And even if you have kind of perfect detection technology, if you're going to say the inside of the school is 100% clean weapons free environment, you need to set up a TSA level of of security, where you're making sure that every single person comes through that detection system and not a single person is able to get in through any other part of your school perimeter. And that's not at all viable.

You know, some school campuses have 3 or 4 thousand students, and a couple 100 staff members and community members and parents who are coming back and forth. And you can't screen all those people. Every time making sure that somebody doesn't throw something over a fence, climb over a fence, leave something in the bushes, leave something there the night before. Sandwich a weapon in between two Chromebooks. You know, it's just not viable. And the more that you game out the different scenarios, which real attacks would it stop? And how many different ways can I think about bypassing it? Then it just shows how not viable it is. [emphasis added]

The Market is Growing - Political Pressure Driving

Despite these concerns from school safety experts, the market for weapons detectors in schools is growing. Publically traded Evolv Technology even touted ambitions to grow to a billion-dollar recurring revenue business.

When asked why schools are willing to buy this technology, Riedman stressed the political pressure school administrators face:

There's a lot of pressure on school administrators. Looking at some of the cases and liability and loss of jobs and even criminal charges, school administrators feel like they have to do something. And they don't really know what to do. They're not security professionals. They're not technology professionals. They might be acting very quickly in the face of a crisis. And they need to tell their stakeholders, parents and staff and community members that they're doing something to secure their school.