Trish Kilpin on responding to and averting school shootings

Frederica Freyberg:
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.

Trish Kilpin:
Well, thank you for having me and highlighting school safety.

Frederica Freyberg:
What does your crisis response look like?

Trish Kilpin:
Well, it’s very comprehensive. 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 and 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’re 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Trish Kilpin:
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 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
Your office also runs the Speak Up, Speak Out tip line, which I understand has taken thousands of calls in the past four years, including more than 400 that were potentially lifesaving in the last year. Did anyone ever call about the 15-year-old student at Abundant Life?

Trish Kilpin:
We don’t have any tips pertaining to this prior to the incident, so nothing that came through SUSO about that individual.

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Trish Kilpin:
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 that’s 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 SUSO 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Trish Kilpin:
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 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
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?

Trish Kilpin:
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, our programs, SUSO is all going to be available to them. And I just think it’s very worrisome that we’d even consider stopping this funding, preventing us from moving forward and giving schools and communities and families what they need.

Frederica Freyberg:
Trish Kilpin, thanks very much.

Trish Kilpin:
Thanks for having me.