Five Years After Parkland, Florida’s Measured Response Is An Outlier

On February 14, 2018, five years ago, a teenage gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school in Parkland, Florida and killed 17 people. 

It was made worse by the multiple layers of government failure that surround it. There were many missed warning signs that should’ve led to intervention and an ill-conceived emergency response that resulted in far more deaths and injuries that should have been. 

And yet Florida’s commendable, effective response since that dark day has been almost completely overlooked. This is an amazing exception in a state that has suffered from high-profile shootings at schools. 

It should not be. 

Policymakers often default to one of two basic game plans when confronted with high-profile incidents of mass violence. Sometimes they do nothing. They accept a status quo that allowed an entirely preventable tragedy to occur, knowing that such events — while devastating — are nonetheless rare.

They often jump on the runaway train of however. “just do something” — a dangerous basis for public policy, and one in which too few people spend time thoughtfully considering what, exactly, that “something” Should be.

That was almost reflexively what I did. “something” Generally speaking, it means “sweeping gun control measures.” These measures rarely address the root causes of mass shootings and threaten to compromise the constitutional rights to millions of peaceful Americans.

Florida could have chosen not to act. Parkland, for all of its horror, was an unprecedented stain on the state’s otherwise solid track record of keeping students safe from lethal violence at school. In fact, Parkland is the only fatality among three Florida students who were shot in a school building in the 18 years preceding it. Two of them were suicides.

However, leaders in Florida did not refuse to act. They also refused to succumb to the pressure. “just doing something.” Instead, they quickly assessed the entire problem in the months that followed Parkland and accurately diagnosed what was wrong. They began to invest in solutions that were well thought out and aimed at solving actual problems or filling concrete requirements.

These tools significantly improved the ability of school officials, both local and state, to identify, assess and manage potential threats in schools. The state now has standardized behavioral threat assessment tools and procedures, which must be implemented by every school’s mandated threat assessment team. Students can anonymously report violent or threatening behavior via a widely publicized and easily accessible app.

Florida schools must now facilitate early intervention by implementing multitiered systems that better link students to evidence-based mental health care both on campus and off campus. Schools are required to annually evaluate their compliance with the minimum safety and threat response standards.

The state also revised its training program to school resource officers in emergency response and crisis intervention. The Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program now includes 46 counties. Through this program, more than 1,000 school employees are trained to respond to campus active assailant situations.

To be sure, Florida’s response wasn’t perfect. Florida has no excuse to almost eliminate the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding young adults below 21 years of age, and its so-called “Responsible” citizens. “red flag law” There are serious due-process issues when trying to disarm dangerous people. The new school safety and mental-health policies are only as effective as their implementation. 

But on the whole, Florida’s students are better secured today against violent threats than they were five years ago — and not just from the rarest of violent threats, like targeted mass shootings, but also from the much more common “mundane” Threats that result from interpersonal disputes and mental health crises. The systems surrounding these students are more designed and better equipped to promote their mental and emotional safety. 

This measured but determined response to tragedy shouldn’t be an anomaly. This should be standard practice in public policy. Let’s hope other state policymakers take note.

Amy Swearer is a legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of The Daily Wire. 

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