Not Yet Bulletproof

A 14-year-old student wounded four people before killing himself at a high school in Cleveland on Wednesday—just the latest in a series of shooters who have helped make 2007 another disturbingly violent year at American schools. In April, 33 students and teachers were killed on the campus of Virginia Tech when 23-year-old student Seung-Hui Cho went on a bloody rampage. Last month an 18-year-old Delaware State student was arrested for attempted murder after wounding two fellow students on the university campus. This summer and spring saw an increase in reported bomb threats at schools nationwide. Research by the National School Safety Center indicates that over the past 15 years 323 students have died in school shootings.

Early reports indicate that the Cleveland shooter, identified as 14-year-old Asa Coon, had a history of mental health problems. He spent time in juvenile detention centers and last year attempted suicide while in a mental health facility. Two days before the shooting he had been suspended from school for fighting, and students reported that he'd recently made numerous threats of violence. Should administrators have seen it coming? Have schools learned the lessons of Virginia Tech? Do schools need to further alter the balance between security and civil liberties on campus to make the bloodshed stop? NEWSWEEK talked with Roger Depue, retired FBI chief of behavioral sciences and former head of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Depue recently served on the eight-member panel tasked with studying the Virginia Tech shootings. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Has there been a measurable increase in school shootings? Or do they just seem more commonplace because of media coverage?
Roger Depue: In the last couple of years there has been an increase of violent crime, the best indicator of which is the homicide rate. But for two decades prior to that, when violent crime was on the decline, multiple-victim shootings were increasing across the board.

What do you see as the primary cause of that?
In my opinion it's due to an increase in violent fantasies among young people and a lack of perceived justice in the family life. There are many young people suffering from a variety of kinds of abuse who lack any system of reinforcement or justice to keep them from acting them out. You can draw that back to broken homes and the disintegration of the extended and nuclear family.

Have schools had to fill that role now?
In a way they have, when it comes to being the principal source of values in the lives of young people. Their responsibility has become more in loco parentis. But there's not a lot of character development in schools. And if the family is not passing on those kinds of values, then those kids are getting them from places like the media and entertainment [outlets], which have become increasingly violent.

Is there any way to effectively prevent school shootings short of installing metal detectors?
I understand the importance of physical security systems. But in my opinion the majority of these events can be handled and prevented by behavioral awareness. I've looked at 60 incidences of either workplace or school shootings over the last 10 years, and in each one of them there have been clear warning signs that could have been acted on but weren't.