Parkland dad outlines vision

Schachter lauded at D.C. forum on policy

WASHINGTON, D.C. – One of the fathers whose son was murdered in the Parkland school shootings laid out his vision for how to help stop future tragedies to an unprecedented gathering of national and local law enforcement officials Wednesday.

Max Schachter’s relentless efforts to prevent more deaths helped to inspire the summit on school safety, which put top officials from the FBI and U.S. Attorney General’s Office in the same room with 50 or so state and local law enforcement officials, school security leaders and other experts at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Schachter’s voice qua-

vered with emotion as he showed the group a photo of his 14-year-old son, but his message was strong.

“Unfortunately the next monster is already out there,” Schachter told attendees. “We’re going to make a difference. We’re going to save children’s lives.”

His speech brought everyone in the room to a standing ovation as he urged government, education and law enforcement to make schools harder for offenders to penetrate by increasing security measures, including bulletproof doors and ballistic-resistant glass.

Officials said they also were motivated to meet to discuss the frustrations and challenges highlighted by law enforcement experts around the nation in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting.

Some of the main goals they discussed Wednesday included coming up with ways to improve the sharing of information among federal, state and local investigators, improving law enforcement and school response plans and looking for trends and discussing common warning signs that could help avert similar events.

They plan to come up with a list of “best practices” to combat school violence and try to prevent future mass shooters from targeting schools.

Law enforcement highlight the need to find more effective ways to monitor social media postings by potential attackers. They also said they want to encourage everyone — especially classmates, teachers and school officials who may notice a change in a student’s behavior — to report any concerns they have to local or federal investigators.

Schachter set up an advocacy organization, Safe Schools for Alex Foundation, and said he has channeled much of his grief and energy into the effort. He also serves on the state commission appointed to examine system failures that contributed to the tragedy and to recommend ways to try to prevent future mass shootings.

Schachter’s son was the first person to die in the Feb. 14 attack, he told the attendees.

Nikolas Cruz, the former student who confessed to killing 17 people in the school, never even entered the class where Alex was murdered. If bullet-resistant glass had been installed in the small window that the shooter aimed his AR-15 rifle through, Schachter said he thinks his son would still be alive today.

Experts say they are still debating the reasons behind what they called an alarming increase in the number of mass shootings in the U.S. in recent years. The Parkland tragedy and last month’s mass shooting that claimed 10 lives at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, are part of that deadly trend.

In the aftermath of the massacre, senior FBI officials said they heard loud and clear from state, local and school law enforcement workers that more must be done to try to identify potential attackers before they strike.

And crime-fighting agencies, from the biggest to the smallest, agree that they need to come up with better ways to share information — about potential threats and what works and doesn’t work when trying to identify possible offenders.

“We can’t allow ourselves to become numb to it. We just can’t think that this is an acceptable way to live our lives,” Joshua Skule, the FBI executive assistant director of intelligence, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an interview during a break in the summit.

FBI officials have apologized and acknowledged that the agency did not appropriately handle two tips it received about the Parkland shooter before he struck. Schule said the agency is still investigating how the information was mishandled and will issue a report when a thorough and accurate review has been completed.

The U.S. Department of Justice will provide an additional $25 million in grant money to train teachers and improve reporting systems for threats of school violence, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced this week.

That money is in addition to the $50 million in federal grants to schools that was offered by the Department of Justice in March after the mass shooting in Parkland.

The grant money is intended to pay for enhanced school safety by increasing training and by paying for metal detectors, door locks and emergency notification technology.

“Unfortunately, the active shooter threat is here to stay. I wish it wasn’t, I wish it was a passing phase,” David Bowdich, the deputy director of the FBI, told the morning session of the summit.

But he said federal agencies are working with local officials around the country to reduce the risks, intercept potential offenders ahead of time, and strengthen security and safety for children at every school in the nation.

Bowdich promised that the school safety issue is a top priority for the agency. There is a need to make schools “as safe as we possibly can, without making them prisons,” Bowdich said.

The problem is obviously a complex one with no simple solutions, officials said, but they vowed to continue to meet and develop the best possible recommendations and changes they can make.