very much. Thanks for your help. >> Thank you.
>> The Office of School Safety within the Wisconsin Department
of Justice provides crisis response and recovery following
a school shooting as part of its mission. The office also
operates a threat tip line. Threat assessments and safety
preparedness for schools. Its director, Trish Kilpin, has been
managing that crisis response in the minutes and days following
the Abundant Life Christian School shooting. She joins us
now and thanks very much for being here.
>> Well, thank you for having me. And highlighting school
safety. response look like?
>> Well, it's very comprehensiv. We have built a coalition of
folks across Wisconsin to be part of crisis response and
recovery teams. And so we had spent time last summer, in the
summer before training folks, inviting them to an academy
where I was able to lead them through some evidence based
practices on how to help schools recover. And so we were able to
draw on those teams that we already developed, and they
supported part of the reunification process for the
school. So that every child that was able to was reunited with
their family. And now we will be working to empower staff to meet
the needs of children in ways that work, to get them back to
learning. Most effectively. >> What is that like in the
immediate aftermath of something like this? When you go in and
are literally hands on with these people who've experienced
this? >> It's heavy work. It is. It's
heavy work. And it's work that we I have a deep passion to make
sure we get right. We want to make sure that our efforts do no
harm. And really, you know, in, in the most horrible tragedies,
there's not like one thing that we can say to make it all better
for people, but we can hear them and listen to them and they can
feel the love and the warmth from the community. And so we've
created with them, had them create opportunities for their
community, their church community to gather and support
each other. And that's been really a beautiful process to
see. >> Your office also runs the
Speak up, Speak out tip line, which I understand is taken
thousands of calls in the in the past four years, including more
than 400 that were potentially life saving in the last year.
Did anyone ever call about the 15 year old student at Abundant
Life? >> We don't have any tips
pertaining to this. Prior to the incident, so nothing that came
through Souza about that individual.
>> So the police chief said in one of his briefings that this
was a targeted shooting. And you say targeted violence is
preventable. How so? >> You know, when somebody
decides that they're going to engage in a school shooting or
an act of violence, they typically behave in ways that
are observable to others. And it's somewhat predictable.
Sadly. They're in the process of unraveling as an individual and
really, most school shooters show that signs in the months
and days and weeks before the event where we see significant
depression, agitation, mood swings, and then we see that
they spend much time planning and preparing for this act,
doing research. And thats often observable to others. More than
82% of the time. Other students often know of a student's plan
to attack. So if people in the community see that somebody
could be unraveling or they're seeing signs that somebody is
thinking about school violence, they need to report that. And,
you know, we've had over 385 tips to Souza about this, about
people planning school attacks. And so we're able to get that to
the local level and have it assessed to prevent that from
happening, which, as we can see, the aftermath is so great. We
need to focus on prevention. >> What is the primary driver
for people who would commit this kind of violence? Is it bullying
online? Is it kind of engaging in the darkest corners of the
web? >> That's a really good
question. So most school shooters do start with a
grievance or an upset. And then the individual often, you know,
makes a decision and they progress down that pathway to
violence. But but newer research is really showing that it's
often a shared belief system, what we call an overvalued
belief system that they want to use violence to redress their
problem or solve their grievance. So it's not only
about the bullying, you know, it is something that we need to be
paying attention to. And resolve early. So nobody gets to that
point of desperation. But it's also about reshaping some of the
thinking that they're, you know, we often see that they find
other people who endorse their thinking, and then it grows and
it's part of child development that, you know, people are not
well versed at this, but it's also somebody who's thinking in
a really dangerous way. >> Meanwhile, the Office of
School Safety is funded only through September in the
aftermath of this shooting, it now seems, though, that
Republican legislative leaders are inclined to fund your
office. What's your reaction to that?
>> Well, I'm not surprised. Truthfully, that there's a
growing commitment to making sure that we have funding to
continue. We need to be able to keep doing what works here in
Wisconsin. There have been many school violent incidents that
have been averted, have been prevented, and we need every
tool possible. Schools deserve for, you know, to be able to
count on our office, to know that our trainings are programed
Souza is all going to be available to them. And I just
think it's very worrisome that we even consider stopping this
funding, preventing us from moving forward and giving
schools and communities and families what they need.
>> Trish Kilpin, thanks very >> Trish Kilpin, thanks very