I watched in horror as the fight between two girls turned into a life-and-death struggle when one combatant broke a soft drink bottle against a nearby wall and began to violently slash her opponent with it. I will never forget watching them strap the severely wounded girl onto a stretcher, drenched in her own blood – at my high school in 1979.
As with many assaults with edged weapons, the attack probably only lasted about 20-30 seconds, but I am sure it seemed like an eternity to the student who was brutally attacked that day. I was slashed on my right thigh with a box cutter about a month later becoming the third student injured with an edged weapon at Central High School in Macon, Georgia that year.
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I also learned a great deal from surviving other edged weapons assaults as a police officer, investigating violence with edged weapons in the campus setting and serving as an expert witness in cases involving edged weapons violence in the campus setting.
I have also learned a great deal from a number of knife crime experts such as former London Metropolitan Police Officer Dylan Gwynn. Dylan has also investigated and survived many acts of violence with edged weapons. Dylan tragically had to watch his partner bleed to death from a stab wound to her femoral artery while he desperately tried to save her using his experience as a combat medic in the British Army.
Over the years, I have learned some important concepts for preventing and preparing people for edged weapons violence in the campus setting:
1. Reduce Interpersonal Conflict
Focus on preventing aggressive interpersonal conflict, especially fights. Working in both the higher education and K12 settings for more than four decades, I found that as with shootings, fights are among the most common precursors to edged weapons violence.
Reducing the number of verbal and physical altercations is extremely important to prevent shootings and edged weapons violence. If fights occur regularly on campus, at special events and/or on school buses etc., these incidents are a significant warning sign that should be addressed aggressively using a variety of techniques tailored to fit the campus organization.
2. Use Weapons Detection Systems and Access Control When Appropriate
Properly utilized metal detectors with supportive access control to the protected area can be very effective in deterring edged weapons violations at special events, graduation ceremonies, athletic events and in the K12 school and higher education and in some hospital settings. Metal detection of students in demonstrably randomly selected classrooms and school buses following the development of carefully researched and written policies has proven to be extremely effective in the K12 setting.
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While I am generally not an advocate of trying to screen all students every day due to the large number of personnel required to prevent the bypassing of checkpoints, the very high-risk urban school district I worked in saw a reduction of student weapons violations by more than 90% over a ten-year period using the random screening approach.
It is important to note that this reduction of incidents was supported by a range of other supportive strategies, such as dramatically reducing the number of fights, utilization of a gun detection canine, educational programs, and aggressively addressing gang activity. As further evidence of efficacy, after I left the district, the random metal detection program was discontinued resulting in a 600% increase in student firearms violations. Violations dropped again when random weapons screenings were resumed.
Because the newer AI weapons detectors have thus far not been proven to be reliable in detecting the small-edged weapons prevalent in most campus weapons assaults, they should not be relied upon to deter and detect knife violations. If they are in use for entry point screening to detect large firearms, AI screenings should be backed up with some form of lawful random or entry point metal detection. This is not only important to improve prevention and detection of violations, but also to avoid the significant false promise of security liability that can result if the far more common violations and assaults involving edged weapons are not reasonably addressed.
3. Train Campus Personnel to Identify Pre-Attack Indicators
It is important to train personnel on how to spot common pre-attack indictors for edged weapons violence.
Related Article: 7 Signs a Weapon Is Being Concealed
I survived two edged weapons assaults in just 15 days as a university police officer without being cut or having to fire my duty weapon because I had been trained in pattern-matching, recognition and visual weapons screening techniques. These skill sets enabled me to recognize behaviors that were incongruent with the time, location and context before I spotted each of these attackers “palming” what turned out to be a pocketknife in the first case and a military bayonet in the second instance.
It should be noted that both of these incidents started with a fight and escalated to the aggressors pulling edged weapons to attack someone just prior to my arrival at each scene. In each case, the aggressor tried to attack me as soon as I arrived because I represented an obstacle to them completing their acts of violence.
4. Train Staff How to Spot When an Edged Weapon Is Used in an Altercation
Dylan Gwinn emphasizes another important point: the value of training staff to recognize when someone using edged weapons during a fight or assault.
It is very common for victims not to know they have been stabbed or cut, and for responding personnel to mistake stabbing or slashing for punches because they have not been trained how to spot edged weapons and techniques used to hide the weapon such as palming.
Lack of training can and has resulted in security personnel, police officers, teachers and school administrators being wounded while trying to break up a fight that is actually an edged weapons assault.
5. Carefully Develop and Communicate Weapons Policies and Laws
Thoughtfully crafted and clearly communicated information on the campus organization’s policies and state statutes governing the possession and use of edged weapons can help reduce violations, especially in the K12 school setting where edged weapons violence has historically been far more common than violence with firearms.
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Though most fatal attacks in the U.S. K12 setting have involved firearms, my experience has been that the vast majority of assaults with weapons in schools involve box cutters, pocketknives and other edged weapons
6. Train Employees on Edged Weapon Prevention and Preparedness
Campus employees should be provided with training on the prevention and preparedness for edged weapons violence such as those described here. Active assailant training, which only covers firearms and does not address the far more prevalent problem of edged weapons violence, can quickly become a missed opportunity to address the actual risk levels for violence with weapons in the campus setting.
As school safety expert Steve Satterly’s Report of Relative Risks of Death in in U.S. K-12 Schools documents, roughly 8% of people murdered on U.S. K12 school campuses have killed by active shooters. However, there have been a number of mass casualty edged-weapon attacks on U.S. K12 and higher education campuses, with more than 20 victims in one knife attack at a Pennsylvania high school.
It is important to address edged weapons as well as other types of weapons such as fire, explosives, motor vehicle ramming and chemicals which have all been repeatedly utilized in mass casualty attacks in the campus setting.
Michael Dorn is the author of 28 books in his field, and his campus safety work has taken him to 11 countries. Michael welcomes reader questions and comments at www.safehavensinternational.org.
Note: The views expressed by guest bloggers and contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Campus Safety.
