A New Model to Stop the Next School Shooting
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Hmmmmm
SACRAMENTO — The police picked the teenager up from his high school after a terrified classmate told her principal he had threatened to slit her throat. The classmate showed them his Instagram account, where he had posted pictures of the Charleston church gunman with the word “hero” underneath it, and a picture of their school captioned “Columbine 2.0.” The officers didn’t find any guns or explosives in his house, and couldn’t arrest him for the threat, because the girl was too scared to be interviewed. So they brought him in to our mental health crisis unit for an evaluation.
My job was to see if he needed to be hospitalized and treated for a mental illness. But the first question out of my mouth was a totally unprofessional one.
“Which school?”
As a physician, my loyalty is to my patients: listening to their stories, helping them choose medications, then getting them home to their families. But when that patient is a potential school shooter, my loyalties get complicated.
I have two teenage daughters in schools nearby. Intruder drills are just another thread woven into the fabric of their childhood. I imagine when they hear the intercom announcement, their primary reaction is glee at getting out of a math quiz. I picture them huddled under their desks, giggling with their friends.
And then sometimes flashes of the real thing creep in. My daughters at the picnic tables at lunch, their hair shining in the sun. How quickly their heads snap up at the first loud crack, and that frozen second of silence before the terror sets in. Everyone scattering in chaotic efforts to escape, to hide, to live. My daughters have done the drills, but they don’t know how to survive a massacre. Worse than the noise and the blood must be the realization that the adults can’t help you, that you are never safe....
My job was to see if he needed to be hospitalized and treated for a mental illness. But the first question out of my mouth was a totally unprofessional one.
“Which school?”
As a physician, my loyalty is to my patients: listening to their stories, helping them choose medications, then getting them home to their families. But when that patient is a potential school shooter, my loyalties get complicated.
I have two teenage daughters in schools nearby. Intruder drills are just another thread woven into the fabric of their childhood. I imagine when they hear the intercom announcement, their primary reaction is glee at getting out of a math quiz. I picture them huddled under their desks, giggling with their friends.
And then sometimes flashes of the real thing creep in. My daughters at the picnic tables at lunch, their hair shining in the sun. How quickly their heads snap up at the first loud crack, and that frozen second of silence before the terror sets in. Everyone scattering in chaotic efforts to escape, to hide, to live. My daughters have done the drills, but they don’t know how to survive a massacre. Worse than the noise and the blood must be the realization that the adults can’t help you, that you are never safe....
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