The more training, the more you load up on the front end, the smoother it's going to be when it's actually a situation that you're going to have to deal with. 

Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing in Education Podcast. The space for Education Meets Resilience. I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.

Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools. Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.

Welcome to today's podcast, where in this episode I'm excited to welcome Bruce Liebe, who retired from law enforcement with 30 years of service. He began his career at the LaSalle Police Department in Illinois and then joined the Illinois [00:01:00] State Police Department where he served for 25 years. And in his time with the ISP or Illinois State Police, Bruce served in patrol, investigations, tactical, and administration.

He served with ISP SWAT for 13 years and was statewide coordinator of the program for seven of those years. He's also certified as an Illinois active Threat Master instructor and is a featured author for 

The National Tactical Officers Journal, the Tactical Edge, where he has contributed 30 articles to date, centering on tactical training, tactical program administration, and operations planning and management as well.

He consults internationally on these topics. 

And I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce through Bev Johns, my previous guest. And I'll leave a link to her episode here as well for those of us that wanna check it out.

Bruce, welcome to the show!

So I wanna start today's conversation by asking Bruce about how somebody in law enforcement can work with preventative [00:02:00] strategies and even proactive strategies in helping to prevent students doing harm within the classroom. For example, what are some proactive signs that we can look for within schools?

I am, as the English teacher, thinking about what are some ways that we can look at student writing, student communication in order to be proactive with that.

And as somebody who was teaching middle school English in the months following the tragedy, just a few miles outside of Parkland. 

Mm-hmm. 

It was very challenging as a first year teacher to be working with students who were offering me pieces of writing, pieces of academic writing. 

Yeah. 

That were filled with confusion, ideation of things like depression and suicide.

Mm-hmm. 

And bringing that to my leadership team, just to be told, don't let them tell you this stuff. Just let them bury it. Just don't, 

oh, 

wow. Try and get this out of them. And as a first year teacher, I, I was really shamed, like they would come to me and be like, why is your [00:03:00] pedagogy inviting this from them?

Instead of me saying, I just came from Parkland. I'm just trying to be as proactive as possible to see what I know. Right. And pass that along. That's, it wasn't meshing. So that was my experience. 

Right. And, and one of the things that you see, and, and I think you're, you're obviously going down the right path there by trying to draw that out, is virtually in all cases, when you have somebody that's turns out to be an active shooter.

Mm-hmm. In most cases, they will transmit their thoughts, their ideations to someone, be it a friend, oftentimes educators, and unfortunately there's a response all too frequently where similar to what you received of, you know, hey, just don't, well, that was a perfect example with Parkland, quite frankly, with the shooter there.

But, in at least three of the phases, there's five phases to an active shooter. At least three of the phases. They are ripe to be identified, if you will, for lack of better description. And the phases they go through a, fantasy [00:04:00] phase at first, which is just imagining fantasizing about this, and oftentimes, pretty much of a constant with these folks are they wanna outdo the last great act, for lack of better description. They wanna outdo the previous shooter. So in that fantasy aspect, they do communicate. And sometimes that's verbally. But oftentimes as we see with students, uh, it appears in writings.

Either somewhat veiled or very, very directly, uh, as in the case of some of the stuff that was in the, uh, writings and etchings and scribblings of the Columbine shooters. 

Yeah. 

So that's an opportunity. And once they get outta that fantasy phase, they go into a planning phase. And this is somewhat, you know, like loose planning.

And it may be the facility. They may come up with a victim list. And again, there's some communication that happens there. And then they get into the preparation phase where they actually start acquiring items to carry out their, their mayhem. Uh, those first three phases are typically, if you will, the easiest to, you know, identify and [00:05:00] maybe prevent this.

Mm-hmm. 

And when it gets down to the latter two phases, which you have their actual approach, they've now left where they live their home and they're in route to their target. You start to get a narrower chance to interdict that individual. And then the final phase is actual implementation. Which at that point, you're only in a mitigation phase at that time.

There's absolutely no prevention to that. So if you look at that whole five phases, like a funnel, uh, the first three are, are very ripe to identify this individual if people are listening. And one of the things I've often found with family is oftentimes family will take on a, uh, a normalcy bias, I guess if you will, where they will like, oh, it's a phase they're going through, or This isn't really what I think it is.

And nothing against the families that have children that end up being that person. Uh, we all have normalcy bias, you know, something off kilter will happen and we try to normalize it, rationalize it into something. Well, that's really not what I thought it was. There's , a [00:06:00] show on ID channel called Evil Lives here.

Perfect example of that because what you see is the family members, the friends, they'll say, oh, you know, I saw this, but I didn't think it was nothing. Or I thought I was overreacting to what they were saying. And it's ignored. And then the problem snowballs, and then it's, it's a problem. And, and then, you know, people are injured, people are killed, type of a situation.

So, there's very much similarity, uh, between, people, family members that do other things other than be active shooters where they just ignore what's presented to them. 

I love how you mentioned Columbine, because one of the thinkers that I have really been following since doing my dissertation is Sue Klebold, who has spoken about the actions of her son, Dylan.

We often just contemplate like these different signs that we overlook as educators and what to do about that. And Sue Klebold, talks about that very openly in her memoir "A Mother's Reckoning". And in her TED Talks, "My Son Was An Active Shooter", and she's very, very bold in terms of saying, this isn't just a me thing, this could happen to any one [00:07:00] of our children.

Yes. So it leads me to think about, especially as you and I who are educators, what are just some noticeable signs that are often overlooked way in advance when they can still be prevented by teachers, leaders, students, community members? What are some things that we can look for before that phase one actually begins?

Well, you know what really you see with these folks is typically, they tend to withdraw. They're basically antisocial for the most part. But then again, too, there's an exception, you know, going back to Columbine, where the media got on the kick of, you know, they were the loners and as if you've read Dave Cullen's book on Columbine.

Yes, yes. Yep, yep. 

You know, he, he's like, that wasn't exactly true. You know, there was some popularity to him, but there were some warnings, you know, some of the dark things they would say, you know, some of the goth like clothing, it doesn't mean everybody that wears goth clothing is gonna turn out to be an active killer.

But, you know, there were so many different things that stair step that stacked onto that. And again, their, their dress, their demeanor, some of the things that they would say, iterates other [00:08:00] folks, and then their writings and some of the notebooks that were seized as evidence, you know, with some of the, uh, cartoon, you know, drawings that they had on there were, were pretty indicative of somebody that was having some, some dark thoughts.

Yeah. I've been following Dave Cullen's work, uh, since he talked about the March for Our Lives movement here in Parkland. And the people that he spoke to in his text on Parkland are actually activists that I knew, and he really emphasizes just the difference with Parkland in itself in this 2018 and afterwards era where Columbine, there was no social media, there was no mass media.

Oh, 

and Sandy Hook. You had targets who were too young to Yeah speak out as they were. So you had the parents. But what Cullen says with Parkland, what was this, he calls it in his interviews, the perfect storm of, where you have the targets, who have the equipped mass media on their side to speak out against their own experiences.

So I think about that too, in terms of also the teachers who are similar, I guess, targets those [00:09:00] situations. What are some ways that communities can continue trying to analyze, observe, and mitigate these different instances? 

Well, some of the works that I like and when you, when you look at, you know, what is the profile a lot, you know, like Secret Service does studies, FBI does studies,

mm-hmm. And what are the profile of active shooters? And it's, it's very broad, quite frankly. Uh, there's really no one particular profile. If we could come up and say, what's the most consistent profile, it'd be like 95% or better male. Certain age groups, usually, like, especially with school shooters from that school age up until twenties, thirties.

So there's no real profile, if you will, other than the sex demographic of being mostly male. Probably the best work, that I've encountered, and I've gone through all three of his books and they're very intriguing reading is Perhaps you've heard of Dr. Peter Langman?

Yep. 

Yep. And I mean, his first was Why Kids Kill, and then there were school shooters and then Warning Signs and I [00:10:00] think he has probably come the closest. At least giving us somewhat of a profile and where he gets into the three different typologies of Yes. You know, the psychopath, uh, the narcissistic individual, they're arrogant, their title, lack of empathy.

And I mean, that kind of demeanor and behavior in a classroom would certainly be, I would think, easy for an educator to pick up on. And I've never taught in, middle school or high school environments. It's always been higher education. But I mean, certainly you could pick out those individuals, those personality types.

Not that they were going to be, you know, active killers or anything like that, but you could definitely pick out those types. And then added to that, if you start having them express these dark ideations, I think that would certainly add to that, as far as a red flag warning sign. And then of course his next, group is the psychotic, you know, the schizophrenic or type related type disorders.

And then what I also find interesting, and this accounts for quite a bit, and of course as you know, in his books, he gives several examples of, you know, each three categories is the traumatized. Those [00:11:00] kids that were at, a very abusive childhood and grew up in a, you know, kind of a violent, dysfunctional home.

And why I liked his work is almost every active shooter situation, you could take one of those three typologies personalities and apply it to those shooters. 

I was also thinking about the different types of trainings and procedures that we have in schools, as you've seen it as well.

So when we look at those trainings and procedures, what among them are effective and how can these be implemented without triggering or traumatizing schools? Like when I was teaching in that middle school class, about six months after the shooting and maybe into the following 2019 year, I was about 20 miles from Stoneman Douglas.

Mm-hmm. 

And even though we were not the school itself, I definitely had members in my class who knew the community well and some who lost really close people in there. And I remember one time we had, I don't remember if it was planned or not, but we had a code red drill in the morning. In that class, I had a student who was in the room that day who had lost a [00:12:00] very close friend in the Parkland shooting, and after that code Red ended, that student in that two hour block that we had class that morning, she just never came back.

She was, very dysregulated. So I had her go move into my little zen corner just to calm down for the rest of the class period. And I realized that a lot of the procedures that we have in schools are pretty triggering, especially to younger students. And what do those trainings look like in terms of ways that we can make them more effective to avoid that element?

You know, with respect to the trainings. Of course, they have to be, I mean, not realistic to the point of being frightening. Mm-hmm. But the way to put it is I always prefer like an all hazards approach. And even with a, an operational plan response plan, we always push the all hazards approach.

'Cause generally most of the things you're going to do are gonna be very similar. , Okay, here's, here's what we do. It's a fire drill and this, we do plan A, this is an active threat. We do plan B and. I think walking the students through, [00:13:00] and especially you have to gear it down, of course, to be age appropriate, you know, what you can explain to a middle schooler or a high schooler, is certainly more than you can explain to a younger child, an elementary age child.

But you have to impart the seriousness, you know, that you're not playing a game, but at the same time just, orderly, much in the same as we do with a fire drill. What I find in, and what I see in some of these schools, that I've worked with from a law enforcement staff training aspect is some are very, very good and some are going through the state mandates of checking the box.

they treat it , like a rot drill. We just go out, okay, we've walked through the paces, we've moved students from point A to point B, and we've checked that box and now, we're good with the state, for another six months. But, again, it's a difficult task of imparting the seriousness but not imposing trauma,

especially, as the kids are younger. One thing I've also found in working with schools is oftentimes the [00:14:00] staff are not prepared. And we've seen that time again, some are very good and some are just, not dialed in. They just haven't had the proper training.

You know, it's not really their fault. And unfortunately, oftentimes they have parameters of this is what your training must be and perhaps maybe we need to structure a little better or improve the quality of the training. And again, it's across the board. I've dealt with some school districts that are absolutely stellar and some that are absolutely lacking. 

And then you mentioned law enforcement as one. That was my next question in terms of what role does law enforcement play in working to minimize a tragedy or even mitigate a tragedy? And I'm thinking when we talk about tragedy, that could be something where there's just one person involved, like a community based suicide or something that's, on a much larger scale, like a Columbine parkland.

Working with law enforcement, with the educators and so forth, it would basically be, again, imparting what we're looking for, what those warning signs are, and also opening the doors up as a [00:15:00] reporting mechanism of how you're going to channel that.

And one of the best things that, school should do, I would say, especially liability wise, is to create a threat assessment process, and formalize it. And that way, you have a threat assessment team, maybe it's the school resource officer, the school counselor, however the school decides to staff that on their end.

But then, you get, this information and they assess this, whether they use a matrix or whatever they opt to use and look at that from terms of, okay, is this a threat or is this maybe just an anomaly? And what that avoids is you either underreact to an actual threat. Or you overreact to a simple situation.

And either way can create, in our society a litigate society litigation against all the parties. And the example that always comes to mind is, one school, this has been years ago where I think it was a kindergartner ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich into the shape of a pistol. Mm-hmm. And there was [00:16:00] a big to-do about that.

And, you know, of course there was people ruffled, parents were upset and so forth. So you have that kind of overreaction. And then there have been cases where the shooter in Michigan where the school had information of, hey, this guy is, there may be some issues here. Or certainly with the issue with Parkland, there was a lot of information present there and they just, for whatever reason, they don't act on it.

And that's where I think we're a threat assessment process, A formalized process, written policies is much, much better than just random. We'll deal with this one at a time. 

Absolutely. And when you think about threat assessment, I'm also brought back to that same, year of teaching, what, a year That was that same year of teaching middle school where there was a student where students did identify him as a quote&quote future school shooter.

I mean, I remember one day he was pounding his fist into my door to come back from the bathroom, like rattling my door, and all the kids were snickering, like, oh look, is the future shooter at our door. And I [00:17:00] think it was that same day, that same week, same period of time that really grabbed my attention.

He was responding to a text that we read. Mind you, it was an Edgar Allen Poe text. But despite that, he was responding to this text that we read in terms of just killing, he was writing something about serial killing. Mm-hmm. And it grabbed my attention because he spelled serial with a c like serial killing. That, that alone grabbed my attention.

But I, I showed it to my mom and she says, um, you should show that to somebody else other than me. Somebody who works in your school. Right, right. See something, say something. So I brought it down to the social worker and her answer was, what do you expect I do with this? 

Yeah. 

And it was left at that. And there's always this, we're told that we are mandatory reporters as teachers, yet I feel like a lot of times we don't want to go forward with that because now if we were to report a student, we are now entangled into some situation that we would prefer not [00:18:00] to be a part of.

And that was scary for me because I want to keep everybody else safe, so. 

Right, right. And, and, and, and, and you also, you, you wanna fit in with your workplace. Exactly. So it really puts, puts the educators in a, in a real paradox. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And I mean, that was certainly illustrated in, in the book Why Meadow died with the

situation there at Parkland , Stoneman Douglas? Mm-hmm. Because there were so many indications,, the staff all referred to him, I think as the crazy boy or something to that, that was kind of his nickname. I don't think probably two thirds of the staff, the janitorial staff, the security staff, knew his name, but they just knew him by sight.

And that was the reference. And there was so much frustration with some of those educators where they would bring things forward and the administrators, for their various reasons, did not want to act on them. So, the pot was boiling and, and they ignored the warning signs.

Definitely. And for us, teachers that want to be mandatory reporters, how can we do this in a way that is not making us be seen as like the over steppers, but rather just like [00:19:00] the collaborators with law enforcement? 

Again, it puts it back on the school administration to go along with this, but creating a formalized threat assessment.

Yeah. 

Makes it, I can't say faceless, but it takes the if out of it, it's, again, you have the categories of, okay, this doesn't amount to a threat. Maybe this is just a disciplinary thing. We don't say these things. Maybe, a younger child is just popping off words, you know, like going through TSA and saying bomb, you know, by accident.

Mm-hmm. You all of a sudden the red flags go off. Maybe it's a minor situation like that and it's just a one-off, if you will, for lack of better description. But then when you have these repetitive signs, especially like that circumstance that you described, I mean, that certainly was like, Hey, there, there's a lot of red flags going on here and maybe this guy, this

student never gets past the fantasy phase of this. 

Mm-hmm. 

But the fact that he's stepped into those five phases, is certainly concerning. But I really do think a formalized process where you have that threat assessment, is the way to go on that. And that way it doesn't come back to [00:20:00] the individual educator. It's a group. You have a policy and you're operating off of that. And anytime you treat situations as like a one-off, each as an isolated incident, you're gonna have problems with consistency across the board where somebody may be subject to discipline or scrutiny and somebody else isn't.

And it just creates a lot of problems, like , Hey, you called my kid out for chewing his peanut butter sandwich into a pistol, and I think this is crazy and you've overreacted, those sort of things,

but to me that would be, the best approach to that.

Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of teachers would prefer not to step into that boundary for that one reason, because they don't wanna be called out for taking that step. So then what does a standard threat assessment look like that can really be effective for schools? 

Well, there's a few different formats out there, but basically what you're doing is you're assessing people that have had interaction with the student.

And it could come from the English teacher, the math teacher mm-hmm. The PE teacher, the janitor, that they've noticed [00:21:00] these particular behaviors or statements, which there's, typically a form, the way they communicate that, be it online or whatever, probably online would be the easiest.

And those go in and they're assessed. And that way it's like, okay, we've had one complaint on this individual. Maybe he said something off and, this isn't gonna be the next school shooter. Like I was saying, somebody just said something they probably shouldn't have said in a way they shouldn't have said it.

Mm-hmm. And that could be dealt with basically a, maybe a counseling. But then when you have all of these reports coming in, or one very serious report, I mean, you shouldn't count 'em like, oh, you gotta have five of these slips before we come in and talk about you. 

Yeah. 

Uh, but you would look at each individual thing and see where that rates on that matrix of, what should our actions be?

And it would not only involve creating that policy, creating that threat assessment advisory board, if you will. But you'd have to create that matrix of, okay, what constitutes what level do we hit when we advance this to the next stage? Do we involve the school psychologist, counselor, [00:22:00] or do we involve the outside authorities?

And again, most schools that have used this concept use, a school resource officer. And from what I've seen between the National School Resource Officers Association and like for example, here in Illinois, they have our own association, which is basically a carbon copy of the, the national. Those officers get some really good training on the onset.

And there's recertification training and it covers a lot of that type of material, a lot of that groundwork where, okay, this is what we should be watching out for. So not only should educators have that same exposure, but the officers can be a resource beyond just being, Hey, here's the cop on campus type of a situation. A lot of these are very well thought out and, definitely not random coming into this. And getting back to the leakage and how these individuals kind of give out these signs, with the Columbine shooters. I mean, they talk to some people, they know, Hey, you better get outta here.

Don't show up. There's been others don't show up for school this [00:23:00] day. Something bad's gonna happen. There was one case, and this has been a few years ago, where, the shooter told, one of the girls in his class is like, Hey, uh, something big's gonna happen tomorrow if you, you wanna bring a camera?

She didn't tell anybody. She brought a camera in, you know? So it's that, again, getting back to what you said, you know, see something, say something, hear something, say something. And unfortunately, a lot of times people don't do it. You know, like, oh, hey, this guy's always joking, saying things, off the cuff.

But, unfortunately, in this day and age and what we've seen, it's gotta be taken seriously. And again, getting back to that whole assessment process, threat assessment, that's where we can kind of dig into that and sort that kind of things out where, okay, this is just somebody saying something off the cuff, thinking they're being funny as opposed to somebody that's planning a future attack.

How long does a threat assessment take? Like if you see something that can be urgent, can this be a procedure that is done? 

Oh, yes. Urgently, 

but carefully? 

Yeah. I mean yes, it can be done very urgent. And again, that's how your group is structured. But yeah, if you have a serious threat, I mean that would be definitely an all [00:24:00] hands on deck type of a situation where, hey, this seems kind of imminent.

This seems very serious. And where you would call the student in call the parents in and, try to address it right there, call the authorities in and advance from there. So yes, if you just have these people saying, certain phrase or a word or maybe some indicators like, Hey, they wrote this paper for this class, their assignment, and it was kind of dark, those can be kind of cumulative and over time, but there are certainly those much more urgent communications that you would wanna act and should act immediately.

But that is the best approach to being ready and willing and able to deal with these potential incidents. Another thing, and I've seen, especially from the school perspective and I had written the updated the emergency response plans for McMurray when I was there is the tendency of, okay, we have this response plan and it's in a three ring binder.

We're good now and we'll put it on a shelf and when the day comes, we'll pop this open and read it. It's like, no, you gotta [00:25:00] have some basic understanding of that. Under stress, your comprehension is not what it is as we're sitting here normally conversing and you're not gonna be able to perceive and go through these checklists and that sort of thing.

So that free preparation is basically key to being a smooth process. And you can even take that threat assessment group and run through scenarios.

You could do training with them. It's like, okay, you have Jimmy said X, Y, and Z and Jimmy did this and he drew this on his notebook. And then test their threat assessment model and go through some practical, so it's not just the first time you're looking at this, how do we advance through this is an actual situation.

So the more training, the more you load up on the front end, the smoother it's going to be when it's actually a situation that you're going to have to deal with. 

Definitely. And so again, as the English teacher, it's very easy to get to know students on a deeper level because of the way that they write and articulate.

And sometimes they're invited. Other times, they're not invited, but they'll still offer that information anyway.

And [00:26:00] for other faculty members that are doing science and math classes and courses, more focused on STEM and logic that might not be curricularly inviting that kind of information, how can they still act as eyes and ears to protect their students? 

You're in an ideal situation where you're hearing or reading, these kids' thoughts. In that case, if you're in like a science or a math or something of that nature, I think it's really going to be their verbalization, how they're acting, we talked about the one personality type that Langman talked about with the psychopathic, the arrogance, the lack of empathy type of person or

that person that's, you know, schizophrenic or at least, you know, exhibiting some of those types of behaviors. That's what they would watch out for. You have a perfect insight again, because you're getting into kind of their thoughts. 

Yeah. 

Uh, because, you know, you're, you're getting that back in the assignments and so forth.

So to me that would be an ideal situation. And I think even as I recall, I don't remember the specific instructor, but that was one of the things that came up with respect to the Columbine shooters was some of the writing assignments and then some of the [00:27:00] really crazy very

dark, evil drawings and sketchings that these individuals had in their notebooks and so forth. So a real fixation on that. But again, with those that not getting the students' thoughts per se, in, in their schoolwork, it would be just watching for those characteristics and, and those behaviors that might seem odd. And it's just things that educators can watch for and I think there has to be a component of educating the parents as well.

Mm-hmm.

And this has been wonderful. Are there any final takeaways from our conversation today? 

Again I would say just eyes and ears, look for those warning signs. Don't always pass things off as, oh, you're just going through a phase, or this isn't really what I imagined it to be. Put stock in that, even if you just discuss it with somebody else. Like, Hey, I heard this. What do you think? Am I overreacting? Am I underreacting? You know, try to get a gauge. And again, the sooner you can identify that this may be a person having problems might be that situation that we can avert or prevent from happening.

And as I [00:28:00] mentioned before, with the five phases of who becomes the active shooter in those first three phases, it's like the funnel. We have the biggest opportunity to interdict that person, for lack of better term, to intervene in those first three phases. Again, once they get down into they're traveling to the site, it's only happenstance that maybe somebody sees them dressed odd or carrying a firearm or police officer pulls 'em over for a traffic violation.

So your opportunities to interdict that person become smaller and smaller and smaller. So really the awareness, when you have the people in that fantasy and the planning stages is definitely a, a must to try to identify these people and step in before you're dealing with another disaster.

Absolutely. And I love that idea of how continuing to work as a community and as a village, as a way to help prevent tragedy. Because we can't raise students in the school by ourselves. It has to be done as a village. 

Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast. If today's [00:29:00] episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts and stay connected with us on the at Classroom Narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook.

Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars and education, one conversation at a time.