Liberal Gun Owners: The Interview With John Van Dreal About Targeted Violence In Schools

Introduction

In February of 2018, Liberal Gun Owners developed a think tank from our own organizational leadership and development core. The think tank’s first task was to contemplate, at a deeper level, our mission of supporting both: the unassailable aspect of modern firearms ownership (our view) and the mitigation of all forms of firearms violence. During this deeper contemplation, we determined that, on an annual basis, we would choose one aspect of firearms violence, research it, and produce a report on the deeper aspects of the issue. In addition to analysis, we decided to include recommendations for our community members, for the wider gun culture, and for the wider world.

Due to the fact that acts of targeted violence (school environments combined with other targeted public acts) are surging in an obvious and egregious fashion, we decided to make the school shooting the seminal focus of our efforts.

Note: school shootings themselves, although they seem to be escalating through the media lens, are staying close to their historical trend (when looked at in three-year increments, from 2001 until today). It is the addition of targeted shootings in the general public (clubs, bars, concerts, houses of worship etc.) that is truly surging. When you combine the two together, the specialized, egregious picture emerges. In our view, any amount of these kinds of acts are unacceptable. However, in order to deal with them effectively, we need to be accurate in our lens.

We would like to define the phenomenon of the targeted shooting by defining the term targeted violence.

Targeted Violence is the result of an understandable and often discernible process of thinking and behavior. It stems from an interaction between the potential attacker, past stressful events, a current situation, and the target. [In this iteration], the subject will display “attack-related” behaviors that move along a continuum of idea to action, including thinking, planning and logistical preparations. (Fein & Vossekuill 1998.)

It follows, reasonably, that the targeted shooting is one iteration of targeted violence. The school shooting is its own, unique version of targeted violence. It often contains additional factors that revolve in the realities of modern adolescence and the cultural components of the modern school environment.

Upon beginning our research effort, we realized that outside collaboration (with experts in the associated fields) was going to be necessary. It was also our determination that the presence of pre-existing, effective systems of targeted violence mitigation was highly probable. We believed that these systems were most likely ensconced in a more mature, sub-cultural, intellectual ditch — away from the fog of the superficial, internet-politics-media loop.

It took no more than three days to ascertain that we were correct in our belief. We found that there were, indeed, scores of professionals already engaged in using and advancing systems that are effective in mitigating targeted violence and targeted violence in schools. This was highlighted by our discovery of the work of John Van Dreal. John is the architect of the modern, gold-standard system of student threat assessment: The Salem-Keiser Threat Assessment System (STAS).

Immediately, this discovery gave birth to the question: if these systems were already in place, why is American culture and American political culture, mostly, unaware of such systems and their measurable, positive effects?

The reasons are, unfortunately, the same reasons that are at the root of much of our cultural strife. We are currently a society filled with citizens who revolve in the following behaviors:

• the idealization of active democracy while having the habits and expectations of a life inside of a passive democracy.
• the absence of effort to go past the limits of personal bias.
• the engagement of hyperbole and in insufficient research on issues and facts.
• the use of instant information, entertainment media, and hyper-focus on the superficial aspects of politics to self-reinforce and engage in divisive arguments and attitudes.
• the idealization of positive law as a superior road to solutions for cultural problems.
• the engagement of denial.
• the engagement of information collecting that remains connected to the least effort possible.

It will be observed, in publications to come, the use of the Liberal Gun Owners’ coined-term Superficial Position. It is a user-friendly term that reflects a major issue in society; an issue at the root of much of our trouble in American society; an issue responsible for all of the remedial behaviors listed above. In the future, we will also be highlighting the extraordinary presence of Superficial Position inside of gun culture.

As we see the term as useful, we would like to take this time to define it:

Superficial Position is an immature mind-state that produces a remedial or barely adequate effort to increase intellectual and perceptive operation. Because of this, it is the precursor to insufficient cultural action. This then sets up a continuing state of mental operation and activity that support (and is susceptible to) the following societal behaviors:

• constant hyperbole in mental processing and in public displays of speech.
• manipulation of information.
• immature ideations.
• contributions to propaganda.
• maintaining susceptibility to propaganda.
• fact-free self-reinforcement.
• manipulation of others.
• the demonization of others coupled with a lack of capacity to observe one’s own hypocrisy in matters.

Superficial Position is the driving force behind people combining the poor research, political passion, divisiveness and hyperbole that feeds the current, ineffective political wheel.

Superficial Position is also the root cause of our obviously degenerating political class.

So, to further answer the question: if there is in existence, a gold-standard mitigation system for school shootings, why are most people unaware of it?

The answer is Superficial Position. This mind-state, ultimately, is the enemy of the good. It is the enemy of maturity. It is the enemy of evolving thought. It is the enemy of the disssemination of useful information. It is the enemy of individual rights. It is the enemy of better societal outcomes. It is the enemy of solutions. It is the enemy of a cohesive society. It is the enemy of an effective political class.

In this specific case, it is the enemy of the efforts to mitigate targeted violence in the school environment.

The entire reason for the existence of the Liberal Gun Owners think tank is to give our community a road out of Superficial Position; a road out of the algorithm that feeds this dead-end loop that is currently dominating American society. It is our strong recommendation that Americans stop engaging in these remedial loops. These behaviors are contributing to the obvious decline in our social fabric and to our inability to deal with issues like school shootings.

The first product of Liberal Gun Owners’ deeper effort (and the first resource that we can offer our community towards a more empowered position), is an introduction to an individual and the innovative system that he has created to mitigate targeted shootings in schools.

As such, Liberal Gun Owners would like to present, for your consideration:

John Van Dreal and The Salem-Keiser Student Threat Assessment System.

John Van Dreal And The Roots Of STAS

John Van Dreal is a School Psychologist and the Director of Safety and Risk Management Services for the Salem-Keizer School District. He has 30 years of experience in threat assessment and management, psycho-educational evaluation, crisis intervention, behavioral intervention, and security and risk management systems consultation. In 1999, he began the development and implementation of the Salem-Keizer Model, a multi-agency student threat assessment system considered by experts to be a leading practice. Through that collaboration, he has worked daily with educators, law enforcement, trial court personnel, juvenile justice, and mental health personnel in the assessment and management of youth and adult threats of aggression within the schools, institutions, and the community. He served as Chair of Oregon’s Mid-Valley Student Threat Assessment Team from its inception in 2000 through 2015 and continues to provide consultation to its membership. He has served as a member of the Marion County Threat Advisory Team since 1999. He is the editor and principal author of the book Assessing Student Threats: Implementing The Salem-Keizer System, Second Edition. He regularly provides training and consultation to audiences nationally on threat assessment systems, preventing and mitigating human violence, school security, and response options for violent intruder and active shooter situations.

John has become a quick friend to Liberal Gun Owners leadership and, through this, has guided our think tank into understanding the true, rubber-meets-the-road reality of targeted violence in society. John is also helping LGO beta-test its own threat assessment forum on Facebook.

In the initial window of time following the spate of school shootings in the late 90s, there were really only two adopters that embraced recommendations from the United States Secret Service to create actionable protocols for dealing with school shootings. One of those adopters was the Los Angeles Unified School District and their innovators, who now assess and help an average of fifteen students per week. The other adopter was John Van Dreal in the Salem-Keiser school district in Oregon. Through his extensive experience in working with violent youth (and his unfortunate experience in dealing with the bureaucracy involved in Special Education), John engineered a simple, user-friendly threat assessment system that can be tailored to work in any school, in any school district. It has a simple, relatively fast-processing speed, and a relatively low cost for basic implementation.

The expertise in STAS is written into simple, easy-to-follow protocols. It can be plugged into existing school cultures with very little stress or hassle. It does not require teachers to become threat assessment professionals or security guards. These are some of the reasons why STAS is considered the gold-standard by professionals in the associated fields. Currently, there are other student threat assessment models in existence like Dewey Cornell’s system: The Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines — which is embraced by Sandy Hook Promise.

The hidden genius of STAS is that it can be applied to any need for any style of threat assessment — not just students and schools. It can be applied to adult and community threat assessment as well.

John Van Dreal is affable, funny, smart as a whip, a renaissance man, and extraordinarily hip. He is the rock star of student threat assessment, and also, literally, a rock musician. He is an outstanding painter, a father, a husband, and a community leader par excellence. His dedication to the town in which he lives is exceptionally admirable.

This brings us to understanding why John’s town of Salem, Oregon is important to those who want to stop school shootings — and other forms of targeted violence. Salem is an exceptional societal model for doing so.

Salem

Salem, Oregon is a state capital. It was once required in Oregon to locate all state institutions inside of the capital-city limits. At one point, Salem had seven institutions located in a relatively small municipality. As such, the town (along with all of the associated municipal services) lives inside of an exceptionally intense risk-density. There are limits to jail cells and limits to beds associated with mental health services. There is turnover. There are more robust numbers of families with institutionalized family members. There are more robust numbers of children who share similar issues as their institutionalized family members.

In addition to the bona fide compassion that is observable in John and his colleagues, there is also a sense of urgency in them — relative to being effective in their jobs. Due to the reality of the risk-density, the threat assessment teams in Salem must be exceptional at executing the protocols of STAS. If they are not exceptional, they run the risk of community inundation by significant problems.

So, STAS is really a diamond that comes from coal. The pressure that was exerted on the coal came from two sources: the innovation of John (and his colleagues) and the extreme risk-reality of Salem, Oregon.

The Salem-Keiser District is a model for the nation because it is a canary in a coal mine. It is also not a system that can afford to stop at the property boundaries of the schools themselves. STAS reaches all the way through every aspect of Salem and its surrounding communities. It does this both because it is the right thing to do and because, out of the need to survive reality, it must.


How STAS Operates

If someone is interested in understanding the system, then we cannot recommend John’s book enough:

Assessing Student Threats: Implementing The Salem-Keizer System, Second Edition

Like the system itself, the book is exceptionally palatable. However, the quick summary is as follows:

STAS is really an assessment that looks at a troubled student inside of a situation. It’s an overall assessment of a troubled situation. This is because the mere analysis of the troubled student leads to a habit of profiling, and profiling is blind to the realities of targeted violence. These realities have been observed by those who have professionally studied school shootings. Identifying the risk-realities are a part of the STAS protocols. The realities are picked up by scanning the situation itself. Profiling, overall, is ineffective in mitigating threats.

In Level 1 of STAS (which only requires a few people in a school to execute), a basic list of risk factors are looked for (inside situations within the school environment) by teachers and staff. If some of these risk factors are observed, the teacher then reports the situation to the established threat assessment team or overseers. Eleven essential questions are then asked about the situation. A basic threat level is established, and the threat assessment team decides on a basic course of action. The actions are within the system recommendations. The team then puts the action into play - when it is necessary. If the issue with the student and the situation seems extensive, the analysis is then handed off to a more thorough team called “Level 2.” Overall, both levels operate a system that intervenes early in the known sequence that is typically followed by those who have successfully executed a targeted shooting. The targeted violence process is sequenced as follows:

Ideation, Planning, Preparation, Implementation.

The Level 1 of STAS gives a school the ability to identify the risk factors associated with this well-known process and intervene before it reaches completion, which could include moving the assessment to the next-level team. However, Level 1 (by itself) is still an adequate mechanism — especially if a school is just getting started with the system.

In the Level 2 of STAS, the same process happens, but there are more members involved in the process. These team members are connected to other services in the community: law enforcement, student resource officers, mental health professionals, social workers, etc. A few additional questions are added to the original eleven and all are answered at a deeper level. The team then works to divert the troubled student and often wrap them in more available services, if necessary.

Ultimately, if the situation is too troublesome to be dealt with through basic services, then more serious options are available, such as law enforcement and juevenille justice.

That is the basics of the system.

In the interview to come, Liberal Gun Owners sits down with John Van Dreal and dives into some questions with him about targeted violence, American society, STAS, and, of course: the role of the firearm in all of this.

If you are a member of our community, a gun-owner who is not in LGO, or a non-gun-owner who is reading this; if you are ready to pop out of the loop of divisive politics and learn or get involved with the sincere professionals who have been working, effectively, for decades on this issue; if you want to get into the actual, mature solutions stream; if you are connected to a school district and want to know more; if you want to join Liberal Gun Owners in our advocacy for the Salem-Keiser Threat Assessment System; or if you are the policy-type and you want to join us in assessing Representative Brian Babin’s, threat-assessment-based TAPS Act / H.R. 6664, please contact us at:

liberalgunowners@gmail.com

We will do our level best to get you involved, get you more information, get you pointed in the right direction, or get you hooked up with the right people.

The Interview

On November 7, 2018, during the attendance of a Threat Assessment Training at Willamette University, in Salem, Oregon, Liberal Gun Owners’ Executive Director, Randy Miyan, sat down with student threat assessment expert John Van Dreal to interview him on the realities of targeted violence and threat assessment in the school environment.

(This text version has been simplified from the actual audio recording, in order to make it more palatable for reading. It will also maintain the flavor of two humans in conversation. Randy asks John a warm-up question, which will be listed at the end of this text version of the interview. In the audio recording, the warm-up comes first. Some of the major questions have organically occurring sub-questions. This as an interview that took over an hour and, with our introduction, contains over 13,000 words. It is not for the TL;DR crowd.)

Question 1

Randy: John, I’m not in the world of professional threat assessment, so, some of these questions are going to be naive because, I am naive, and some of them are going to be naive on purpose - so we can get more from the question.

JVD: That’s fine.

Randy: The very first speaker in the seminar (local Chief of Police) stated the following:

“The world has changed.”

Even before coming to the seminar, I observed that there are conflicting conclusions about this specific time in human history and, in particular, conflicting conclusions about the phenomenon of targeted shootings. Even among your own team, mostly in their subtext, you can hear varied conclusions on this concept. I know that human violence and targeted violence are common throughout human history. However, I would like to ask you for your view:

Is the presence of targeted violence in schools new?

JVD: Newer. Historically. So, to first answer that question: the first targeted event in American history was during the Pontiac’s Rebellion, right after the French-Indian war…in which, and I don’t remember which tribe, I think the Delaware Tribes, they went into a schoolhouse and they killed or injured about thirteen people. It was a targeted act. It was an act to terrorize the community.

Fast forward: there was a terrible, targeted act in the late 1920s, in Bath, Michigan. Dozens of people were killed with bombs, and I think an additional, attempted shotgun attack which killed, I think, one person. So, historically, they are still a means by which you get a community’s attention — you attack the epicenter where the children are. But it really wasn’t until the late 60s that they started to show up with Kent State [edit: John meant to say “mid 60s with the University of Texas”]…and in the late 80’s [edit: it was the late 70s] there was an event with a female shooter down in California — who was expelled at the time. And fast forward that a little bit into the mid-90s you get: Paducah, Jonesboro…you get attacks, and some of them quite terrible, that become a cultural script. And that is then combined with the American vigilante idea: the film Natural Born Killers and The Basketball Diaries - that have those flavors to them, that young people watch. And that cultural phenomenon did evolve, and I think, when you put it all together, you see an escalation of school shootings in the late 90s.

That stops in 2001 and the number of K-12 school shootings remains a constant, with about the same number of people killed — if you take three-year increments within 2001 until today. Relatively constant. Still, far too many. One is too many. And it is definitely a means by which someone can have their fifteen minutes of fame. That’s the [new] cultural script. It’s no longer the vigilante movie, the vigilante video game. It’s the shooting; the mass shooting; the body count; the mission oriented killing that acomplishes nothing more than killing people.

While it has stayed a constant in K-12, it has definitely escalated in Higher-Ed and community killings. In fact, you know, the FBI study in 2011 or 2013…I struggle with numbers that I don’t have in front of me…too many [numbers I have had to remember] in the past…and, those [kind of events] have increased. I believe even tripled, and I haven’t seen the data since Las Vegas. I’m gonna guess, quadrupled.

And so, while the world has become a safer place, these kinds of acts have increased or at least stayed constantly around us — which terrorizes us. And it has that impact on our collective psyche. It’s like being traumatized. It doesn’t have to happen in Salem for our teachers to feel it. But if somebody gets shot in Nebraska, in a bad dope deal, or five people are killed in a bank robbery, we probably don’t even hear about it. And if we do, we forget about the next day. And if somebody goes into a K-12 school, and shoots kids, five kids: we hear about it, we think about it, it affects us because we work with kids, teachers, kids who look like the kid who did the shooting. And so that is where the world has changed.

The additional piece is that social media and 24-hour news have poured gasoline on these flames. Even sometimes when the flames are very small, it exacerbates the situation. And that’s the changing world. People are very unnerved right now. Yet, most of the data suggests that we are far safer right now than we ever have been.

Randy: It’s one aspect of violence. I am almost apprehensive to say “blown up” because we don’t want to give in to that. But, the cultural scripts and social media have given birth to this thing.

JVD: The perception has increased, but also, the actual events [also] have. They are still very rare, statistically. That’s why there is a contradiction between the safer world that we live in — the healthier world, the more nourished world that we actually live in now — and these events. Because they seem to contradict each other. The events are so few and so little compared to the data, because the world is safer. There are still tens of thousands of bad dope deals happening. There’s domestic violence happening — where kids are getting hurt or killed. And that’s a very large number that is decreasing. And this [school shooting / targeted shooting occurrences] is a very small number that’s increasing — though it doesn’t affect that [overall] declining trajectory.

Randy: As someone who is in gun culture, the reason why I ask this question is that you see a lot of people in gun culture use the statistical trend of “downward”, [trend of overall violence into a safer world] to do nothing or to not care.

JVD: Or dismiss terrible events.

Randy: But you would definitely say, as I just heard in your words…you would say that the phenomenon is obviously, significant?

JVD: It is definitely significant. I equate it to…as I said earlier…post-trauma reactions. People experience the same kind of trauma whether they are there in the community or not. Now, those who are experiencing the violence are going to be the most traumatized. But if something happens across the planet, or across the state, to people that are family, and it’s a personal attack: when these events occur, somebody went out of their way to study and prepare to attack innocent people and kill them for no other reason than killing. And those people are our family. That’s way different than the bank robbery or the tornado that hits the city and terrible things happen. We, kind of, are able to dismiss that stuff. When it’s personal: the more personal it is, the more it hits the part of our brain that can be traumatized. Now, some people are more resilient than others, and that’s a different discussion. But, overall, the effects of school shootings or mass school shootings or shootings at concerts have on everyone is, “that so coulda been me!”, “Man, those people look just like me!” And, “that guy that did it looks just like somebody I know!”

You have this personal reaction, and so, the fact that there are many of these today, and the terrible nature of them, and the very broad effect they have on us, is, I think the issue that you’re talking about. Because it paralyzes communities. It paralyzes schools. It turns teachers into hyper-vigilant people when what they should be doing is teaching kids how to solve for “X.” That part of their brain isn’t working. They’re looking over their shoulder at what the latest look is. Is it a trench coat? Is it a person that wears or thinks or says certain things? And they start profiling. That’s a very negative thing.

Randy: What we come across, often, and what I can also hear inside of the seminar is: there needs to be the ability, psychologically, inside of people in American society, to be able to deal with that dual-nature of, “we are safer, but this is bad.” Because people are trying to go to one or the other. They are not balancing it out. They are either ignoring it or they are making the hugest fucking deal, ever, out of it — and that’s not the effective way to understand it or to deal with it.

JVD: Because hyperbole turns people off. So, you do get these contradictions, this dissonance that happens. Yet, it doesn’t have to be that. We need to focus on these issues. Not let go of the fact that we are decreasing crime, making schools safer, our architecture is better in terms of deterring crime. We’ve learned a lot. We want to keep that going. The contradiction isn’t really a contradiction, it just seems like that and a lot of people get stuck there.

Randy: And this is, in your opinion: a global phenomenon or an American phenomenon?

JVD: It’s a global phenomenon. Now, it may have kinda started here, probably did, but it’s been going on. Scotland had a terrible shooting, I’m gonna say, early 90s? In China, they don’t use guns but they use sabers — and they get body counts. Germany has had its share. Norway: one of the worst ever. So, the idea of screaming your rage and your dissatisfaction with your life, from a theater, from a stage that is a school or a concert — which is just a perfect place to do it — it's not new but it certainly has caught on. And then, to see someone’s picture on the front of a magazine and their name being repeated…if you are a person who feels bad about your life, and you don’t really have much to live for, and you think, “this is as good as it’s going to get” and you go down that road of violence to solve your problems, it can be fairly appealing. It can also be fairly appealing if you are a sociopath or worse, a psychopath. Most sociopaths have stuff to live for.

Question 2

Randy: You kind of went over this a little bit, this phenomenon — the iteration of this phenomenon is new — but: what has happened in American society or in society in general? What has happened with the impact of modern times that allows that impact to hit the human psyche in these, mostly, adolescent males, which then comes to fruition as this thing? Because, certainly, we’ve had difficult times before, as a race. There have been terrible things that have happened, perhaps, as a result. But this thing: modernity is hitting these kids in their psyche and they are turning it into this phenomenon. What has happened? Can you even palpate for it? It’s a lot of different variables, obviously.

JVD: There are. That’s a huge question. Awesome question. And, it’s not the perfect storm, but it is a really good storm of things coming together. I think access to other people, socially, who have done it. Ideas in their manifestos. There is, certainly, less supervision happening. There is an entitlement and I think everyone, secretly, would like to be famous. This could be a route for people who see that there will never be another way to establish themselves — and I don’t believe that is true about them, they believe that is true about them. There’s a means. There’s a cultural script.

I don’t know if this is going to come and go in the next 30 years or if we are going to be battling this for 100 years. But, I do know this, from a prevention standpoint, and from understanding those risk variables — I just listed a couple of them — schools and parents and communities can get in the way of far more of these events than we are. Are we going to get in the way of all of them? To be honest with you, I don’t think so. It’s out there now and everyone has instant access to information. There’s no way to really guard your kids from knowing that this happens. There is a way to help spin it, so they can understand it and you can protect them. That’s good parenting. But there’s no way to guard kids from this [psychologically] if they are living somewhere where there are other people — and electronics.

But, what I was saying was that, having prevention systems in place — they are not expensive systems. They are trained people. They’re experienced people who do the work — having those things in place will decrease these events. And, not just the number of the events — this is where I think our work is as important as eliminating or decreasing the event — we intervene in these kid’s lives, that are headed this way, whether or not they would get there to the event: they are making decisions that are negative — changing their trajectory in the way that they see life, or may get them arrested for a felony by conspiracy, and putting them in an institution for seven to ten years. If we can keep that from happening, that’s really a good thing. Whether those kids are even going to make it that far, we can stop them. We really are about very early intervention. We are inserting into those trajectories before there are arrestable offenses. Our goal is to not get kids arrested — just turn them around, stop them from doing it. I don’t know if that answered your question.

Randy: No, totally. You totally did. Certainly, from the outsider's view, without being somebody that overreacts, there is an obvious difference in what is going on right now - relative to what was going on before. When you look at it through the media, even if you are a calm person, it looks apeshit.

JVD: I think it is apeshit. It really is. Because they are still happening — every couple of weeks there’s some sort of event like that. Or somebody gets caught on the way to the event. It just scares the hell out of everybody. You know, we hear that two kids were caught with a backpack full of guns. We’ve already gone to what they were going to do. They don’t even have to do it anymore. We all shut down and go, “goddamn it! Again?? Those two kids? That kid and his grandma? How in the hell does this keep happening? ”

Randy: It’s really hard to be an average, everyday person, who [looks at this subject, but] doesn’t do this stuff for a living [professional threat assessment]. When I first started to research and study this, within days of when I first emailed you, I got your book and I got a notebook. I was just going to take notes as I read. What I did was that I wrote down ten or eleven of the most prominent school shootings since the late 90s. I wrote them down on the front of the notebook, with the dates. And every time I’d put the notebook down, I’d see them. Well, within the first 6 weeks of reading your book [and reading some other things and taking notes], I had to put two more schools on the front cover. And so, that’s quite shocking. The other thing that makes it difficult is that, when I go to find the words of the people who are masters of this information, the first thing they are saying is, “calm down…don’t overreact.” But, what I am looking at, on the front of my notebook, seems like, just, hell or fucking crazy. Do you know what I mean? I, myself, have a background in oriental philosophy, martial arts, the oriental healing arts, and Buddhism — I’m somebody who knows how to keep it to the middle and keep calm, for myself. I look at the juxtaposition of those things and it’s very difficult to bring them all together. So, for somebody who might not have the inclination that I have, psychologically: I can see how people in society can’t deal with the dual-nature of it.

JVD: Well, it’s just so personal. It’s so very personal. It’s right there on your TV or on your social media screen and it has an entirely different effect on your mind, and on your interior limbic system (where you react to stuff like this) than the kinds of events that are more arbitrary, or acts of God — that’s what I’ll call them. Things that just happen. Everybody is going to experience them that way, whether they are more or less traumatized by that. Because resiliency in how you might deal with certain trauma may be different from the way that I do, and that’s brain science. But the event stays the same.

Question 3

Randy: Is it preferable or critical that professional systems, aimed at targeted violence mitigation/prevention, be instituted into school culture? At this time in human history, do you see it as something that American society must do? When John wakes up in the morning, does he go: “shit, another one? Let’s go America, we need to get our shit together!” Or does he go, “It’s preferable but I can’t get too worked up over this because I know how humans are.” Let me just say this, my opinion: it’s critical.

JVD: Well, let me say this: one might get stuck with “preferable” because there are so many other priorities as well. Like, teaching kids. Making sure they leave school with good educations as good citizens. It’s very expensive. The moment you say, “critical” you have to make room for it. It’s kinda like saying, “safety is our top priority.” Is it? As a school district? Are you putting comparable resources to safety as you are to other top priorities? Like teaching kids to read? If so, then you can say that. If not, then you can say “it is a top priority” or “one of our priorities.”

Well, this is where critical vs. preferable come into play. I think it is critical and I can say it’s critical because it is affordable. You can plug it in. And, having the system isn’t just about catching the kid. It’s about people knowing you have that system, so teachers in the public can relax, and knowing you are doing everything that you can, with the resources that you have, and the information you have, to keep that from happening in their community. Additionally, to catch kids before they go too far down that road. So, they are not ruining their lives or the next ten years of their lives with a jail sentence. And, to create a more psychologically sound environment. So, here is where it becomes critical: when teachers can relax and do their job, the forebrain works — that’s where we need them. We need them teaching kids to read — math, science, art, make paintings, make music, build relationships and maintain relationships. Be a good citizen. Know political issues and study them and vote on them. That’s what we are supposed to be doing in schools. You can only do that from your forebrain.

If you get into your middle brain, then you go to fight or flight, fear, exacerbation and hyperbole, that part of your brain — it’s that part of your brain’s job to do that. Because, historically, that’s how you got safe. Something is scary, you are like, “holy shit, I gotta get to high ground! Everything down there is bad right now!” And then you make sense of it when you get to the high ground. We don’t want our teachers and our kids in that part of our brain.

So, having a system in place, having them know that system is in place, so they can access it, and they can report, builds a more psychologically sound environment. So, your teachers do their job and your kids do their job. That’s also why it is critical. And I think it is as critical an argument as the violence prevention piece. Hey, if you have a school district where you have a thousand teachers that are terrified, they aren’t doing their job. You have a thousand teachers that are relaxed, they know you are doing your job, they know how to report, they are going to get a lot more out of their students.

Randy: And also, obviously, this is why you should not lead with, “we need to get into those schools, hard security!!!”

JVD: “More metal detectors!!!”

Randy: Yeah, you are, sort of, taking the hive mind of the school, and you are putting it into the fight or flight, whether you recognize it or not. And the solution, actually, even though we use the term “soft”: it’s the solution to get everything in the hive mind to the forebrain, and is actually a more effective defense mechanism towards that end. More than “hardening.”

JVD: The forebrain can engage in analysis. The forebrain can do something called, “situational assessment.” It can walk into a room and look around and see where the risks are. And that’s where you catch these situations. It’s people who are taught to look for risk factors or patterns that are out of place. When you are in your middle brain you won’t do that. You’ll immediately categorize and stereotype. So, if the last kid who did a shooting had a trench coat, every kid with a trench coat is going to shoot your school up. Instead of: “that’s an item of clothing. I’m nervous right now, but let me stay in my forebrain. Let me stay in the part of my brain that will analyze that and will look at risk factors. And, by the way, oh yeah, that’s just a coat.”

Question 4

Randy: Do you and your colleagues discuss scenarios where the rate of targeted shootings in schools increases significantly? That is, the possibility of the contagious aspect of the phenomenon, in society, increases exponentially? Like, where it matches the “Oh, shit!” people…we have this whole group of Americans going, “Oh, Shit!!! This is totally out of control !!” Do you guys ever discuss: “what if this were to catch fire, even worse?”

JVD: We haven’t. What I do in the other part of my job is I do table-top exercises, where I discuss “what would happen if…in your school, at bus time?” I rarely use an example of somebody coming in for a mass body count. I use examples that are far more likely, in our town: somebody with a restraining order, two-times felon, is gonna come, get his kids, no matter what, from Room 5, and go to Nebraska and get away from the police. And by the way, that teacher, in Room 5, turned him in to Child Protective Services. So, he’s going to go ahead and beat that teacher half to death with the fire extinguisher — which he grabs on his way through. [It] would be incredibly traumatizing to a school — very personal to everyone. So, when I do table-tops, I do a lot of examples like that. And those are my, “what ifs?” What would you do? Now, that’s not threat assessment. That’s violence mitigation and some people call it first person shooter response. I call it violent intruder response. And that’s what I do. I’ve never proposed the question that you just asked. It’s an interesting one: what would it take, and what would that look like, and what would do?

Randy: So, my thought was, you have a great system in place here. What if in 2020 — I’m not picking that because it’s the date of the election — but let’s just say “2020”: you saw a 2X factor of events or 3X, would it just be a matter of, “we need to get more minds in here, because of the higher volume, and keep doing what we do?” Just out of curiosity, I wondered if you guys had even considered that.

JVD: We have not.

Randy: Well, it might be good.

JVD: Yeah, that’s a great discussion to have.

Question 5

Randy: If we assume that STAS and other systems are essential foundations to preventing / mitigating targeted violence in schools, do you think it would be helpful or harmful [towards proper development] to have them federally mandated?

JVD: Mandates are great if they are funded. So, I do think it would be quite helpful to have some sort of clear support if not a mandate with funding from the federal government. I’m not sure that will ever happen because they — every time they’ve ever gone down that road [with threat assessment bills], they get watered down. There is some movement right now going in that direction [John is referring to Rep. Babin’s bill: The TAPS Act / H.R. 6664]. From a state level, I definitely think states should be looking at funded mandates. It’s not an expensive program. And most states aren’t so big that they can’t provide five to ten coordinators that could manage these teams and set these teams up in regions within the state.

Randy: Sometimes, in American society, whenever we have a mandate or whenever we have the government involved, they can take a gold-standard program, like yourself, and make a quick photocopy of it and then create a bunch of dogshit.

JVD: We run that risk.

Randy: That’s why I asked the question. It would be taking quality and then, perhaps, going quantity with it, and losing a bit.

JVD: It’s definitely a risk.

Question 6

Randy: If a school system attempts to institute threat assessment:

Can they take a simple, “build as we go” approach or do they have to go “whole hog?” What would be the minimum line of implementation for a school in year-one? If a school comes to you, and asks you to guide them with STAS, you say to them: “Just get to the point where you are doing ‘X’. ”

JVD: Yeah, uh, Level 1. Bringing in site-based assessment training and site-based staff. And this is, I think, one of the draws to the Salem-Keiser model. I spent about 13 years working through Special-Ed systems. And I designed this so that it would be the opposite of a very bureaucratic system that requires an extensive amount of time to get anything done. So, when I train school districts, the primary training is called “Level 1 Training.” And that’s for counselors, administrators and SROs (Student Resource Officers) — or people who have similar jobs. And I train them at being experts at following protocol, not experts at threat assessment.

They simply need to know the foundational elements and understand the risk factors. And then follow the protocol — because this system is protocol driven. The expertise is written into the protocol. So, if I can get a district up and running on Level 1 teams, to identify the serious risks, then the only thing I need to have available to them, in that first year, is some level of oversight and expertise to guide them to further resources, like law enforcement.

Phase two is a Level 2 team, which is a community organization, and structure, that supports the schools and resource hunts for them. And they are the community organizations that serve youth, provide resources — whether it is through leverage like juvenile justice or mental health. They know where the stuff is that will help these kids move off of these pathways — and that takes longer. These are collaborative relationships with in-kind donation — that’s what you’ve seen here today. That takes a couple of years to get going, to get people trained. You find that, within that community — your experts. So that’s where you find the lead, who takes care and coordinates. But you can start it, you can launch it, it’s a site-based system that is sufficient to identify the problems. Where it falls a little short is where the schools are resource poor. “Now what do we do?” That’s where you need at least one person that has some oversight, from a district or community level that can say, “okay, I got this. I am going to walk you through…and call so-and-so over at mental health and get the counseling or we are going to get the membership to the community club or whatever to keep this particular student busy.”

So, really, two phases and then some refinement as you go.

Randy: So, it would be helpful for a school to develop a Tier 1 structure even without an adequate Tier 2 structure — even if they had a town full of jabronies and the municipality was a mess? It would still be valuable to them?

JVD: Absolutely. The Level 1 structure is a completely sufficient and adequate threat assessment. The Level 2 assessments ask all of the same questions, they just dive deeper. And then some extra questions. Once somebody is identified on that targeted trajectory, then help identify resources that keep the kid included in school. That’s why you, ultimately, want that. Most of the districts I work with are trying to do them both at the same time. And they get their Level 1 launched within a year, and their Level 2 kinda comes and goes. There are people in here [in the seminar], right now, that have been working on that Level 2 for three years. And it’s pulling the resources together and getting the in-kind donations. It’s a really tough job to do that. You kind of have to have, kind of, a dedicated person with that as a job description to really get that done.

Question 7

Randy: We observe obvious reticence in American culture in regards to a better understanding of targeted violence in schools. The same reticence with appropriate action. Have you come across this reticence during your time with STAS?

JVD: Yeah. There’s one district in the state, that shall not be named. It’s been a while but has asked me to train them a couple times. About a decade ago — the folks that have asked me to train were gung-ho to go but had the reticence (and I would say had the head-in-sand-attitudes) from authority figures in that district. I honestly believe it is because they believed at the time that it would just be better not to know than understand — so that they couldn’t be held accountable. It’s a true head-in-sand. That’s the only time I’ve experienced that. Most of the people that contact me are ready-to-go with this. So, I don’t market this. Obviously, I have a job that I do every day. And what I do for other districts is as a part of our district mission to export this to some degree, or from my own personal business. But I haven’t even thought about marketing it. Someday, I might. But I don’t think I’ll run into that reticence because anybody that shows up in one of the rooms that I am teaching in, is there to do this. And has, at least, some authority, and permission to be there from somebody high-up in authority — probably executive leadership.

Randy: If you palpate or observe, let’s say, on a platform like Twitter, and you type in: “school security” or “school shootings” or “threat assessment”, you will see a lot of expressions from public school teachers and from people who are in the know about the mechanisms of public school, who say, “teachers already have enough shit to deal with as it is. Do I need to do this other thing too?” That is a very common reaction. So, in terms of the reticence, how reasonable is it to expect your average teacher to be in that position and then have to train their mind? Is it daunting?

JVD: It is. I don’t think that it’s reasonable to pile that on teachers. That, again, is why there is a draw to this system. Because It doesn’t pile all that on a school. It provides a protocol with the information and key people who then work that assessment. Teachers simply need to know a couple of things: risk factors and where to go to talk about them.

The risk factors are easy. There’s a brochure that we put together a long time ago, based on chapter 5 of the book. But, I made it palatable, easy…10 items for parents and teachers to look at. And very common sense: “if these things are happening, please call us.” The system itself, within the school, gives the teachers a place to go when they have concerns. And that’s what we are heaping on them. “Hey, be aware, you can bring these to our attention. Especially if you see these things.” Then you list them out. Now, additionally, something we are doing in our district is a short training for all staff, called: Options-Based Decision Making. And that isn’t threat assessment. It’s, “what to do in the case of a crisis.” And there is some training of the mind that takes place there.

The way I do this is that I identify with the teachers how they already have a skill called, “situational awareness.” They already know how to walk into a classroom and read it — and notice where things are out of order. And they already have pre-prepared their options. They have thought about (especially good teachers, but any teacher that’s been around for three or four years). They have already thought about what they would do if Billy, that new student, really starts escalating and throwing alphabet blocks — whatever it is. They’ve thought about it ahead of time.

Today, they are walking into the class, they are reading what is happening, all of the indicators are there. They go into their plan — it works. The next time, maybe it doesn’t — but that teacher has this bag of tricks. So, she looks at Billy, “uh oh, it’s not working today.” She reads the classroom again, situationally assesses, changes the options. So, teachers, custodians, bus drivers are already doing this. Transfer that skill to a crisis. That’s the training I am adding to our staff.

Randy: You're taking their pre-existing psychological structure, that they’ve developed from being already there, as a professional. You are just kind of shifting it.

JVD: Yeah. And they get permission to use it. Instead of going, “well, what do I do now?” You know you have options. You’ve already thought about it. Nobody goes into a theater anymore without thinking about where they are going to sit. Everybody is thinking about that. Don’t let it paralyze you. Give yourself some time to think about your resources in a classroom: where you can go; where your exits are — for really terrible events, but any event. I am trying to move our staff in this district to think calmly through a security lens, even though they are not security trained. Basic security lens. And my argument is this:

This has been the first 100 years in humanity where people haven’t had to do that anyway. We are very lucky. We have police and a standing army. Your ancestors and my ancestors were constantly reading what was going on around their village or their town because they were the ones who had to protect themselves. So, they had that skill set. They did some terrible shit so we could be here today. They did some violent stuff.

Randy: Yeah, there was a lot of killing.

JVD: Yeah…or you and I wouldn’t be here today. And I move their minds to understand that they’ve already got this. And then I help them do the table-tops to practice thinking it through. So, we’re not dropping it on them, like, “you gotta learn all this!!!!” It’s, “hey, you’re already doing this, let’s practice.”

Randy: I think the perception is that you’ve got Mrs. Mary, the 8th-grade teacher or the 9th-grade teacher and she’s teaching art. She has a mindset: she’s very elaborative, and legato — her whole life. And then here comes John Van Dreal and he’s going to make her head go, “HUT, HUT, HUT, HUT!” Right? Like, she’s going to have to be a SWAT Team person.

JVD: That’s where they come into the discussion — thinking that. They never leave thinking that. I am keeping her identity and there’s no way I am going to ask her to be a combat soldier, ever. I’m not a Run-Hide-Fight fan. Because it is never “Run-Hide-Fight”, my friend. It’s “Fight-Fight-Fight.” That’s all anybody hears from that presentation. No matter how well it’s put together. It tends to be taught with bravado. And that’s where you lose about half of your educators.

All of your art teachers, and your music teachers, and your math teachers that didn’t get into this business to get into combat, they tune out. But, when you capture what they do daily, and you identify the way their brain works, which is what I do, and I identify with their humanity and their biology, and where they come from historically, it’s a natural place to put them. In identifying a crisis ahead of time and avoiding it, first of all — risk factors — or, if I don’t avoid it, I am going to mitigate it. And I [the teacher] already have the ability to do that, I just didn’t know that.

Randy: One of the things that we deal with is the Self-Defense Spectrum. And, of course, we deal with the firearm’s place in the spectrum also. But, it’s amazing how small of a place the firearm fits. Where it fits, nothing else will do. The entirety of the spectrum is your mind and situational awareness. And my opinion, and the way that I view it, is that there are two relationships with situational awareness: there’s Chuck Norris in the jungles of Vietnam and then there’s 007. Right? So, the art teacher would do very well with 007’s style of situational awareness. It’s very smooth, it’s very cool when he kills somebody. He doesn’t even break a sweat. He can stay in himself. But if you are Chuck Norris in the jungle, you are asking people for a lot — because only professional soldiers or people that have been in law enforcement…

JVD: Very well trained…

Randy: Yeah…they know how to go to that place or they LIVE in that place. But, that’s how many people in society? Is that 5%, even? In American society? That can be that way?

JVD: I’d add Robert Downey Jr. for sure, from Sherlock Holmes, because he’s your James Bond. He’s always reading the room, right? I mean, it’s definitely exaggerated. But that’s one of the best examples of situational awareness in the media that I’ve ever seen. You know how they slow down? And he sees these things and he practices them all in his mind — what he will do. People understand that when you show them that.

Randy: In school, security approaches things like that [Chuck Norris style situational awareness]. They [schools] are going to have a [Chuck Norris] security representation and, like you said, that’s not really accessible to a lot of people.

Question 8

The overall societal approach inside of STAS and your team seems to be one of:

“Don’t overreact, but don’t do nothing.”

Double negative on purpose. Fair assessment? Can you elaborate on the approach?

JVD: Be sober. Be prudent. Know what you are talking about.

Randy: So, anybody that’s approaching, seriously, the mitigation of school shootings, in school culture, in the school environment, should adopt that sort of an approach?

“Calm down, but don’t sit on your ass and pretend that this isn’t a big or a significant deal.”

JVD: Right. And the whole objective of the protocol is it helps guide that: like, “here’s what’s real about this and here’s what isn’t.” Now, “address what’s real.” That’s the way you should be solving all of your problems in life. Inflaming it in hyperbole, “this is the next school shooter”…I’ve heard that so many times. That’s never been the kid that even gets on my radar. The kids that end up on my radar are the kids that are identified by those who do know those risk factors. And they say, “hey, John! Do you know how you talk about blueprints and plans and veiled threats?” [John then hypothetically asks] “What kind of kid is doing that? Oh, Got it!! We are there!” Again, we get in early. Don’t know if that ever really would’ve gone anywhere but we are going to stop it from getting further down that road.

Randy: Alright, let’s move on, I swear we’re almost done.

JVD: That’s alright. I can’t feel my fingers anymore [from the cold].

Randy: I know! You said it was “beautiful out here.”

JVD: It was when the sun was shining on us!

Question 9

Randy: If you had one opportunity to tell a room full of parents and teachers, with very little knowledge of these matters, why they need to look into student threat assessment, what, simply, would you say to them?

JVD: Well, I’d give the three reasons: to intervene in a potential school shooting or a violent act. To intervene early with kids that are about to make decisions which may not end up with people dead, but will end up being with those kids being excluded from school, expelled, or possibly in detention. And obviously, change a life in that manner. And the third is to improve the psychological safety of the environment so that the kids can learn and the teachers can teach. We do all three of those things. And any one of those things is a reason why you would embrace the program. Any one of those three.

Randy: We talk a lot in gun culture about, “the cat’s already out of the bag”, relative to the kinds of people that want to take the number of guns and reduce it to zero. And that’s really just not reasonable…it’s plausible, but is that ever really going to happen? No.

JVD: No.

Randy: So, I sort of see it as the same thing, which is: “the cat’s already out of the bag.” This is happening in society whether you want to do something about it or not. So, if you are going to have to do something about it, which is what I am hearing in your words, why not institute this thing that improves school culture anyway? In other ways: bullying, other kinds of violence, ah…domestic stuff, dating violence…

JVD: Yeah, it’s an overlay that works with anything. It’s a template that works with anything. It’s common sense. It’s inexpensive. It uses resources, mostly, that we already have. And it’s defensible because we are not profiling. We are not predicting the future at all. We are not making statements about people that we can’t defend by simply saying, “this.” In fact, we are not identifying individuals in the situation, we are identifying the situation. Here’s the situation: it contains 1–2–3–4 people, and in that situation, these are the elements that are elevating it or escalating it. Let’s decrease those variables. Because our assumption is this: every human being has the capacity to act out violently, even kill people, if given the right motive. Right? And without anything to get in the way? Having the weaponry do so? So, we already assume that anybody who has been referred to us has that potential. We are just deciding whether the variables are there. Which is actually very obvious when we do the assessment. Because you know what would cause you to become violent. I know what would cause me to be violent. And, we are pro-social about the way we view that: self-defense or protection of family and country. That’s not the same with the 14-year-old kid who has nothing to live for or perceives it that way, and now he’s thinking of this act.

So, we get into that situation. That’s why it’s defensible. It’s the opposite of profiling.

Question 10

Randy: If you were approached by a parent, who was not in your school system, who had no threat assessment system in their child’s school, who had an adolescent son who had behaviors tending towards a Tier 2 threat [needing extensive services], how would you guide that parent?

JVD: It’s definitely going to go law enforcement in a situation like that. And I would try to do some assessment, probably on my phone, looking at what kind of law enforcement resources the community has: do they have a threat assessment team, at least, for adults? Or trained people? In this region that’s fairly easy to do. I can just pull up our association of threat assessment professionals list and take a look to see if there are any police trained and members of our organization that exist in that community, and that’s a resource that I’m gonna give her.

Randy: Yeah, because you guys have a bomb [exceptional] area here for that.

JVD: Right, we do. We have an excellent membership.

Question 11

Randy: Can you talk, briefly about the effects of student threat assessment on bullying in your time in the Salem-Kaiser School District?

JVD: Threat assessment doesn’t always get used on bullying. But bullying is a targeted behavior. It’s rarely ever a kid that is out of control: screaming, and yelling and reactive. He may act that way, but it’s usually fairly planned. So, a bully will catch the weaker kid, the victim, outside of school, at an opportune time, victimize that kid, almost always with some minor aggression, maybe a punch, but then a threat of terrible things. So, what you’ve learned today is that you look at communication and you match it with behavior. So, the bully is communicating, “I’m gonna kill you and all your family if you don’t give me your lunch money! “ The behavior is really intimidating, minorly to moderately physical acts: a punch, a push. So, it doesn’t always get assessed. But the template certainly will work for bullying. And it will identify what I just told you: the behavior doesn’t match communication. The intervention is to work with bullying curriculum to pull the two apart and then start focusing on the bully. Not the victim, but the bully, and why that’s occurring, and the opportunity where that’s occurring. And we’ve seen that through our protocols. But, it’s a fairly fast process when you use our protocols on something like that. And most schools won’t. They’ll just go after the bully and they’ll deal with it. Because you know, it’s somewhat textbook now. We haven’t measured it, though.

Randy: Salem-Keiser has it’s own separate kind of bullying protocols?

JVD: Yeah, it’s a couple, kind of, different bullying curriculums.

Randy: And those can be integrated relatively simply?

JVD: Yeah. They are already in the school.

Randy: What I am seeing, from a macro-view, is that you guys have made the decision to create a school culture that has an innovative, advanced approach to the school experience: the psychology of the students, the mental health of the students…the overall goal is to have this above average, at least, or exceptional architecture inside of the school culture that deals with all of the shit that can happen. Is that fair to say?

JVD: It is. We’ve got a long way to go. I mean, that’s been our focus. A lot of that is dollar-and-staff-driven and our counselors work all day long on a lot of that stuff, and suicide risk assessments and a lot of mental health issues. This is a community that is…we are a state capital. By Oregon law, at one time, you had to have all of your institutions in the state capital. I think we had seven at one time. I think we are down to six. There are institutions. There are families of those that are institutionalized. So, along with that comes all of the familial problems that would come along with having a dad or a mom in prison, or the mental health issues that can be inherited traits by children who would have mental health issues, so bad, that they would be institutionalized. So, our district has a slightly skewed population when it comes to need. We have a much higher need. So, delivering that service has always been something that we’ve wanted to do because we have to do it.

And now we do have mechanisms and systems in place for moving forward — threat assessment was one of them. There are many others, and getting more mental health counselors in the school — more access to mental health, those are changes and shifts that take years. So, we just started bringing more mental health professionals into the schools to do, you know, counseling (not therapy), but more than guidance counseling. We just started doing that a year ago. We won’t really start seeing the result of that for four or five years. We will really see great results in ten years because we will be catching problems when kids are between the ages of six and twelve at that point — which is really when you want to catch it. Now, we are scrambling to prevent — prevent when things are on their way to trouble. We want to get in and prevent it before it even becomes a thought.

Randy: So, I see, through what you are saying, that there’s a combination of factors. You guys are hip, because you’re in Oregon. And you’re innovative. But at the same time, the city’s history has forced, out of survival: you’ve got to handle the realities. You guys have combined being hip, and “holy shit! This is a century into this and we are gonna be swimmin’ in it!” [unprecedented community issues in the current era, if we don’t step up]. And then, nobody is gonna want to live here. Right?

JVD: Yeah. Absolutely. And if we are educators, our job is to do what I said: create better citizens who are better educated — and get along, play nice in the sandbox. That’s our mission — with every kid. No matter who that kid is. Whatever kinds of problems that kid brings, that’s our kid. We don’t get to say “no”: documented, undocumented, mental health issues, criminal issues. We are taking that student. We are doing everything with the resources to make a citizen out of them. That’s the mission of this district. You can’t have that mission and not attend to these problems.

Question 12

Randy: I saved the best question for last — the gun question.

A number of the people on your team(s) are gun owners. Firearms are an obvious part of the modern school shooting. Can you give me your opinion on the use of legislation to mitigate firearms access to those who should not have access? How would you weight the effectiveness of cultural/ community/family protocols vs. legislative mechanisms vs. an integration of both?

JVD: The two come together with prudent, logical approaches. And to me, it’s really the mechanism that fails: a background search that doesn’t capture something that shoulda been captured. We have to keep in mind that, even if we really tightened up our gun control, there are still a number of these [targeted shootings] that would’ve happened — Los Vegas being one of them. Now, would he have been as efficient, without a bump stock? No. So, the tool is pretty efficient in the United States. I mentioned China where the tool is a saber: far less efficient. The mindset is the same. But the brain is the greatest tool and it will make any other tool, if you use your brain efficiently, more efficient. And that’s what a gun is.

So, if legislation were to force more effective background searches, and I’m not even sure if I know, or if I could tell you what the mechanisms would be for that. But, if it could happen…and It would require legislative acts. I don’t think anybody is going to do that without being told they have to. Then, I do believe it decreases access to the tools. It might, on some occasions, stop the act. Because the person has such trouble getting the tool that they lose interest. Or the ideation changes or something happens in their life that is positive. I mean, we always want to leave room for that, right? Something good could actually have happened to these kids. And the ones that are still living, when they talk about it, they say that. They say, “if somebody woulda asked me, I woulda told them — this is where I’m at — but nobody asked me.” That’s why we always recommend that pro-social adult connection.

But, back to your question: I don’t have a good answer on that. I know there are guns everywhere. I know: burglarize one-in-every-three houses and you’re gonna get a gun. They are still pretty easy-to-get outside of regulated processes. And there are a number of people that have done these acts that wouldn’t have been picked up because they didn’t have felonies; they weren’t domestically violent; they didn’t have egregious enough mental health issues that they were on a radar. Remember, mental health is not the cause of this. It just makes it worse. So, that’s a tough question and there’s such a political aspect of that, that just gets in the way of civil discussion.

Randy: And that’s why I am asking you and I’m grateful that I came to know your work and came to know you a bit because you do understand that. I myself am interested in looking at the truth beyond bias, and [beyond] political gravity and I come to the same place that you come to, and that is: we don’t know what the fucking answer is, and let’s, at least, be honest about that — before we upturn society and dive into personal rights vs public safety and get into a war with each other over it, can’t we just admit that nobody has the answer?

JVD: To that question, I don’t believe they do. I think the most important part is to recognize that, at least, half of this is a cultural issue. It’s not a gun issue. Part of it is a gun issue. But we know that people will continue to think of doing these acts. And if they can’t get guns, they drive cars through crowds. Trucks. They’ll make more bombs.

Randy: Acid.

JVD: Acid in England. And that’s the cultural piece. Something is driving that that makes that appealing. And not all the people that do that are sociopaths or psychopaths. They are troubled people and they are solving their problems in ways that are harmful to the community.

Randy: Just a quick, last thing, and I don’t want to say who said it, I can’t remember if it’s one or two of the people that spoke at the seminar: brought up the point that behavior is not predictable. And that’s why student threat assessment is not in the business of prediction. So, that also means that abnormal behavior or violent behavior is not predictable either?

JVD: To some degree, yeah.

Randy: In terms of the role of guns, I think that it is important to understand that, no matter what systems we put into place, we’re not going to be a pure predictive mechanism for human behavior and the outcomes. And some of the presumptions about what we can do about gun violence, some of the presumptions are just that: that we can absolutely reduce this to zero, and see it coming, and do these certain things with the guns, and slam people into this mental health program, and into this drug, and something like that. And they [extreme gun legislation advocates] see the recognition of the truth: “hey we can mitigate” [but not eradicate]…as copping out because we are saying “mitigation is where it’s at.” You can’t take the guns to zero. You can’t do this [additional gun regulation activity] and it all goes away. You can’t see exactly how it’s gonna go.

JVD: It’s the argument between the Utopian thinker and the Pragmatist. We would all love to see a perfect world. There’s no way in hell. I know human behavior too well. It’s never gonna happen. We can mitigate, we can change, we can make things better. We have been doing that. And those are all sequential, logical, reason-oriented ideas that start with fact. And then the capacity of us to act in a way that makes the difference. We have to have the capacity to do it. And dollars and people have a lot to do with it.

Randy: John, I’m gonna let you go. Thank you very much!

JVD: Hey, my pleasure!

(This is John’s Warm-Up Question)

Randy: It’s my understanding that, after Columbine, the state of Oregon mandated that schools do something. Is that correct?

JVD: Sort of. They passed a bill, and she [the female colleague who leads the STAS seminar] references in there [in the seminar], I just can’t think of it right now. In ’98, [a statute] that basically required a district to make a policy and an action for threats that listed people, students, for death — kill lists. These were well-intended legislators. But, I mean, what is a “kill list?” Can that be a verbal list? Could it be a drawing with some names on it? So, we interpreted that more liberally, to include any kind of threat, that suggested severe lethal injury — which is kind of the definition of ‘violence’. As opposed to aggression like fighting. You know two kids punch it out, you have a fat lip…it isn’t a ‘violent’ action. It is an ‘aggressive’ act — they’re fighting. So we looked at it from possibilities of violent behavior and then, what we decided to do was get out in front of it. Because part of the legislation required a mental health evaluation or at least the consideration of one. And those are very expensive, plus, I knew enough at the time that a mental health evaluation didn’t determine whether or not someone is going to follow through or not. It really was very difficult to do anything predictive. And everything I was reading suggested, “no, you look at risk variables.” You look at the things that will elevate the risk and those that will decrease it. And that’s how we built our system as a response to that legislation.

Randy: So, the action was definitely sparked by the state legislation?

JVD: Absolutely.

Randy: Had that legislation not mandated and created that spark, would you have started the Salem-Keiser Threat Assessment System?

JVD: We would have. We were already pretty engaged in problem-solving with a focus group. We had our school psychiatrists and our social workers sitting around and talking about this right after Columbine or right after Springfield — one of the early events. Whether we would’ve had the mandate from our superintendent or not is questionable, but we did have a very forward-thinking superintendent and really had an assistant superintendent who was very forward thinking and she made it a mandate in the district that we build this system. And, she funded it. I actually think that she probably would’ve done that (without the state mandate). I don’t even know how much she knew about that legislation. Then it showed up on that list of laws that are going to impact your school district, that comes through the mail…well, the email now. I kind of half-think that we would have. If we had not had the dollars for the FTE, the “Full-Time Equivalent”, the position, we would have had something. Because we, as a focus group, were building an early version of that protocol: a list of questions, that collaborative staffing process that became our system.

Randy: Certainly if you guys had started that process without the push from the state, you would have been watching the news and would have seen another event, and that would’ve probably pushed you guys because you were already on that path. So, it wasn’t like, “John Van Dreal is sitting on his ass, and he’s just doing his job, and oh, here comes the state…”

JVD: No, we were already talking about it and my interest has been violent behavior — not on my part of course, but on our youth…violent youth behavior — since the 80’s. I worked in an institution — worked with really aggressive kids.

Randy: So, you were in that wheelhouse?

JVD: I was in that wheelhouse. You know, you have to do professional development every year and all my professional development was on workshops and the publication of literature about kids being violent or aggressive — and warning signs. So, it was on my radar one way or another. I have to be honest, it wasn’t something that I wanted to do at first [student threat assessment] because I didn’t want to be the person by myself, who made a decision. So, I was able to collect these people and they were wonderful. These agencies and you see them in there right now [in the seminar] and they all said, “yeah, we’ll help! ” Which means I get to share my decision making with them.

Randy: Are people getting paid to be a part of your teams? Are they volunteering? Is it both?

JVD: It’s called, “in-kind.” So, we have paid employees in the district like… [the woman who is district coordinator] and she coordinates all of it. And she does the threat assessments. The members of the team that come in from the law enforcement agencies, the mental health agencies, the youth authority, juvenile justice — that has become a part of their job. So, it was just kind of added to their job description back in 1999, when they attended the focus groups with us. They helped build the system, the flow charts that you see today are the same flow charts and, with doing that, they are able to do the work, hit the meetings once a week, and the mental health agencies committed to one to two people available to go to the schools and do the assessments. Now, their amount of time is considerably less than the head coordinator. But it’s in-kind. In other words, it’s a community effort to solve a problem. The district leads the way and committed some resources. With that, our partner agencies said, “hey, we’re In!” It’s everyone’s “problem.”

Randy: Like I said a few minutes ago, it’s awesome to watch the collaboration, the amount of knowledge, the multi-disciplined approach…it’s just amazing. I’m used to looking at human beings not having their shit together…a lot…and it’s really nice to see the level of intelligence.

JVD: Yeah, I’m glad to hear that…but [at first] I was hesitant. It’s a heavy job.

Randy: Well, I mean..you can’t do it alone…it’s like one dude saving the world…or some shit.

JVD: Imagine this, if it were just me doing the work in 2000, 2001: I go out to the school, they send me a referral, I go out to the school, sit down with “Billy”, talk to his parents, talk to his teacher, make a decision that I pass on to the principle that goes something like this: “Yeah, I think he’s okay.” And then I go home and try to relax, by myself, having no one to share that decision with. That’s not something I was gonna do.

Randy: Yeah, and then what if “Billy” goes off and does something in the school, it’s on John Van Dreal.

JVD: Or Billy…the decision to bring him back causes more stress, or I don’t attend to some of the aggravators, and now Billy hurts himself. However that plays out…even if Billy doesn’t do anything, I still have to sit at home and wonder — and wonder the next day and the next day. With the process that we use (STAS) it’s all driven by risk variables. You count ’em up and attend to them. Then, I’ve got dozens of people sharing that responsibility — including the Safe Schools Initiative people and The FBI, who support this kind of process. It’s good company to be in.

Randy: Yeah, you can tell. Like I said, it’s robust. It’s thick with experience. It doesn’t feel flimsy.

©2018 Liberal Gun Owners ©2018 John Van Dreal