WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — When the active shooter alert sounded at Florida State University, police agencies locked down 403 buildings over a 480-acre campus.
It wasn’t easy.
“Colleges have kids walking all over, coming in and out of buildings, 24 hours a day,” said mass shooting expert Katherine Schweit. “So, you really don’t have a grasp on where do you have people and where are they at risk.”
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Schweit once led the FBI’s mass shooter program and now hosts the podcast, “Stop the Killing.”
She said, so far, the police response at FSU appears to have gone according to plan.
“Alarms went out at the university right away,” she said. “They notified everybody. And certainly 20 years ago that had never happened.”
Schweit said most universities have been planning responses to mass shootings since a gunman at Virginia Tech killed 32 and wounded 26 in 2007.
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“Universities themselves, I think have been working towards perfecting a plan,” Schweit noted. “But it is a complex plan when it comes to so many buildings, so many square miles, and so many kids.”
Schweit said fellow students and parents are the key to reducing mass shootings in schools.
She said several potential campus mass shootings have been thwarted when a peer or a parent reported a student whose behavior deteriorated, and in some cases, even threatened a mass shooting.
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