New Jersey Fusion Center School Shootings Commonalities Analysis

New Jersey Fusion Center School Shootings Commonalities Analysis

This report attempts to analyze the indicators and commonalities of recent school shootings in an effort to inform public safety officials and assist in the detection and prevention of potential school shooter plots or attacks.

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Who are the shooters?

In the last 10 years, male students have been responsible for the majority of school shootings nationwide. Students who perpetrated attacks were also more likely to know their intended targets rather than to attack their victims randomly. When students targeted an administrator, they believed that either the school failed to protect them from bullies, or the student felt school officials unfairly reprimanded them.

The remaining attackers were outsiders with no relationship to the school or school employees who attacked their supervisors because of employment disputes. One instance of a school employee attacking a school occurred in March 2012, when hours after a teacher was fired, he returned to school and shot dead a school administrator prior to committing suicide. Outsider shooters with no relation to the school, on the other hand, are more likely to attack their victims randomly because these attackers had no discernible association with the school and had no grievances with any potential victims.

In 2006, two separate outsider attackers shared similar tactics, one at Platte Canyon High School in Colorado in September, and another at an Amish school at Nickel Mines, PA, in October. In both incidents, the gunmen attacked the schools, took several female students hostage, and killed one or more students, before taking their own lives moments before law enforcement officers broke into the classrooms. The threat from outside attackers is not, however, limited to a gunman entering a school. Shooters have also targeted students by waiting outside the school or near the perimeter during recess or at dismissal.

http://publicintelligence.net/njroic-school-shootings/


The 29 mass shootings incidents since 1999 – listed in Appendix 1 – were analyzed to identify commonalities and trends. These include the following:

Males between the ages of 17 and 48 conducted all of the attacks but one.
The largest number of mass shootings – 13 of the 29 – occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee.
All of the active shooters were single attackers, with the exception of two students who conducted the shootings at Columbine High School.
In most of the incidents – 20 of the 29 – the active shooters took their own lives or law enforcement was forced to shoot and kill them, thus leaving their true motives uncertain.
In only four of the 29 incidents were the shooters active or former members of the U.S. military.
Semiautomatic handguns are the weapon of choice for mass shootings.

Active Shooters: How to Respond

In many of the case studies discussed, there were indicators of potential violence. The following is a list of warning signs that an employee may exhibit in the workplace:

Increased use of alcohol and/or illegal drugs.
Unexplained increase in absenteeism; vague physical complaints.
Noticeable decrease in attention to appearance and hygiene.
Depression/withdrawal.
Resistance and overreaction to changes in policy and procedures.
Repeated violations of company policies.
Increased severe mood swings.
Noticeably unstable, emotional responses.
Explosive outbursts of anger or rage without provocation.
Suicidal; comments about “putting things in order.”
Paranoid behavior or utterances (“Everybody is against me”).
Increasingly talks of problems at home.
Escalation of domestic problems into the workplace; talk of severe financial problems.
Talk of previous incidents of violence.
Empathy with individuals committing violence.
Increase in unsolicited comments about firearms, other dangerous weapons and violent crime.

http://publicintelligence.net/njroic-mass-shootings/