STOP ATTACKS LIKE COLUMBINE & vIRGINIA teCH
2-Year Prevention Program stops attacks in every school system . . . and costly building evacuations.
100 times a day, North American students are found with guns, bombs, and plots to take out their schools. Dan Korem uncovered how to stop these attack and his research has been deployed by over 15,000 education professionals around the globe. In virtually every case, his Random Actor violence prevention research stops massacre attacks, mass bombing/shooting threats, and costly building evacuations. On a large scale, the only region in the US that didn't have threats after 9-11 was a region where over 2500 educators used his research. Here's some highlights:
- There is a consistent behavioral profile - the Random Actor profile
- Students can typically be identified before they attack
- There is a 3-point intervention that guides students out of harms way within weeks . . . without stereotyping . . . and classroom begin performance significantly increases
- Since 1997, there has never even been a letter of complaint filed when these strategies have been deployed . . . which has affected hundreds of thousands of students
- Dan identified an entire population of schools that never have these threats. He identified them after he solved the riddle in the early 1990s why there are mass shooters at the Post Office but not at FedEx. He developed a method so that any campus can do what educators now call doing the FedEx thing by applying the Random Actor Violence Prevention strategies.
Dan is the author of Rage of the Random Actor—Disarming Catastrophic Acts and Restoring Lives, regarded as the most trusted source on the subject. To quickly get you up to speed, we've provided: 1) 3 journal articles Dan wrote that summarize why these strategies work; each provide similar content, but for different audiences 2) Track Record of Results 3)An excerpt from Rage of the Random Actor on the difference between racial/ethnic streotyping and behavioral profiling.
- K-12 article (Texas Association of School Administrators – 2008)
- Higher Education (Leading journal for campus police chiefs - 2005)
- Community College Trustees (2005)
- Track Record of Results
- Excerpt from Rage of the Random Actor on stereotyping v. behavioral profiling
Also recommended is the book, If Only I Had Known—The life-saving solution that thousands have used to stop school massacres by William H. Dodson, Ph.D. in 1997, it was on his watch as a school superintendent that his high school had the first massacre that started the global trend in 1997. He details his experience and states explicitly that Dan Korem's research is the only solution he's found that works. Click here to read Chapter 1.
2-Year Prevention Program
Each year, we provide a handful of 2-day workshops to elevate awareness. Most assistance, though, is provided through a 2-year prevention program that school systems have succesfully used to stop threats. Below are two abstracts that explain the program. These two summaries are for K–12. If you are a higher education campus, you can review these summaries and contact for specific details related to higher education campus programs.
Highest Risk Communities: Statistically Safe Suburbs and Small Towns
Dan's research identified in the early 1990s that these communities are highest at risk. Sounds counterintuitive, but just think about where the attacks occur globally. Then do a search for where the Random Actor bomb and mass shooting threats occur and you will see for yourself the pattern. Consider the two highest profile massacre cases where Dan was involved long before the attacks, as recorded in Rage of the Random Actor.
- Over a year before 1999 Columbine massacre: Colorado police officers trained by K&A told Dan of imminent attacks. Dan warned Colorado state officials in February before the attack. Iit was agreed provide that K&A provide prevention training. The attack occurred. The state of Colorado never deployed training.
- 4 Months before VA Tech April 2009 massacre: The police chief of William and Mary College requested that Dan provide training because of a statistically significant number of students threatening suicide. Education and campus law enforcement executives from across the state attended. After one day of training, they were asked to use the predictive grid they had learned (and detailed in Rage of the Random Actor) and identify the highest risk target in the state. They identified Virginia Tech, one of the only major institutions not present.
The training was so well received, the police chief asked Dan to repeat it in May 2009. Tragically, the Virginia Tech occurred the month before. One of the most senior psychologists from Viriginia Tech attended the May training and recommended to his campus investigating committee that the Random Actor Violence Prevention research be considered. The committee never read the report. The psychologist later resigned.
Here is the dialogue between the William and Mary police chief and its president during the Virginia Tech attack:
President: What do you think about this?
Chief: The shooter is going to commit suicide, is affluent, and he has displayed very specific Random Actor behaviors that have been observed by others.
President: How do you know this?
Chief: I have been trained to identify Random Actors and prevent and respond to Random Actor incidents.
When the chief asked if this research could be deployed across the campus, the president refused.
The same week, another law enforcement professional who attended the training and worked at the state fusion center that tracks critical crime data and response, wrote the following the week of the attack:
Hey Dan, my unit --------------- has been working the VT even since Monday. I just wanted to tell you that I have been recruiting hard to get our folks into the William and Mary class, and telling anyone that would listen that Cho is-was a RANDOM ACTOR and Dan taught us how to ID and address this exact problem . . . thank you for the knowledge.
- One more example: There are many other similar incidents where K&A has been involved before the attacks have occured. Here is one more.
In the early 2009, Dan identified the statistically safe small towns around Tyler, Texas as one of the highest risk targets for a Random Actor attack in the state of Texas, that has population of 26 mil. He volunteered his time and gave an address to the superintendents in that area and explained the threat assessment. The meeting was arranged by Keith Bryant, president of the Texas Association of Mid-Size Schools. He was also the superintendent of nearby Bullard Independent School District. Mr. Bryant had been deploying Random Actor Violence Prevention research for over 10 years in districts where he had served.
The Tyler superintendent told Dan Korem he was not going to deploy the research even though he had seen it stop threats in a district where he previously served.
Several months later, a student with the Random Actor traits stabbed and killed a teacher without provocation in Tyler. Dan warned that this might trigger what is called the "Psych Ward Effect," described in Rage of the Random Actor. Within months, a teen and a young adult burned 10 churches to the ground . . . and a middle-aged man put over 30 pipe bombs in resident mail boxes.
Two months after the Tyler school slaying, Bryant's district hosted prevention training for surrounding districts. The training was organized months before the murder. During the training educators identified a student who needed intervention. An hour later that same student made threats which were quickly mitigated because they knew what to do. The superintendent at Tyler would not allow any of his staff to participate in the training.
It is because of the frequency of these kinds of experiences that Dan and his wife Sandy have donated millions of dollars to save and restore students lives. If this research didn't produce life-saving results, Dan wouldn't continue. Instead, he gives up to 20% of his time to protect and restore the lives of young people by equipping educators with a proven strategy.
It may be hard to visualize an attack in your statistically safe community, but you have a responsibility to protect those under your charge . . . and restore the lives of these at-risk students. The typical cost to deploy this research is only the cost of a soft drink per student. When Dr. Dodson, who experienced the massacre that started the trend, found out about this research and training, he titled his book: If Only I Had Known—The life-saving solution that thousands have used to stop school massacres
