A parent hugged her daughter outside the Bellefonte Area High School football field, where students were gathered by police after what they say was a hoax shooting threat on March 29, 2023.
Emily Reddy / WPSU
How to make schools safer from shootings and threats of violence
Pennsylvania school receive threats after Nashville shooting this week
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Scott LaMar
Emily Reddy / WPSU
A parent hugged her daughter outside the Bellefonte Area High School football field, where students were gathered by police after what they say was a hoax shooting threat on March 29, 2023.
Airdate: March 31, 2023
There is an all-too familiar pattern that develops after a school shooting like the one in Nashville earlier this week that resulted in the deaths of three nine-year-old students and three adults.
There’s the news coverage, the questions about why and how it could and still does happen, thoughts and prayers sent to the victims and their families, and calls for stricter gun laws. And then nothing happens until the next shooting.
But something else that happens across the country is schools are threatened with violence – either a shooting or a bomb threat. It happened again this week nationwide. In Pennsylvania, there were maybe 10 schools – maybe more – that received threats.
With us on The Spark Friday to discuss what has become known as “swatting” and school safety were Joseph Walsh, an assistant professor of computer science and criminal justice at DeSales University, who also is a police officer and Jeff Tomlinson, criminal justice/ homeland security professor at DeSales. Tomlinson is the former supervisor of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Philadelphia.
