In March 2005, tragedy struck the small town of Red Lake Falls, Minnesota. Jeffrey Weise fatally shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend, and seven people at the school before turning the gun on himself. Seven other students were injured in Weise’s shooting spree. This incident was touted by some as being the worst school shooting since Columbine in 1999.
Upon investigation of what made Weise tick, it was discovered that he was an avid poster to a neo-Nazi website, where he referred to himself as the Angel of Death. He had been removed from the regular school setting because of a policy violation, and was placed in the homebound program. Weise was also taking Prozac to combat his depression. However, no one thought he was capable of such violent acts, and no one saw this incident coming.
But Weise was capable, and he did carry out the worst school shooting in six years. He also changed the entire Red Lake Nation with those ten fatal shots. Media descended on the reservation within hours and camped out for several days, disturbing the community that was once so quiet.
Just hours after the incident, neighboring Beltrami County offered to support the Red Lake Nation in whatever ways they could. They provided law enforcement, social service support and trauma counseling services. Minnesota US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger commended the school for having put good security measures in place and for having practiced for an event like a shooting.
Minnesota law was changed after Columbine to require such crisis management plans. The MN statute stated that every school board must adopt a district crisis management policy by July 1, 2000. The policy needed to address the process of handling potential violent and/or crisis situations arising within the district. Each school was then expected to practice the plan, so they would know how to initiate it in the event of a real crisis. Red Lake Falls hired Burnsville, Minnesota, based company MacNeil Environmental to create their crisis plan.
After the March 2005 shooting, lawsuits were filed against MacNeil Environmental. The lawsuits stated that MacNeil was supposed to help Red Lake Falls implement a five-year program starting in fall 2001 to provide a crisis management plan, train school officials and evaluate the school's security weaknesses. The lawsuits also alleged that MacNeil Environmental wasn't qualified to create an emergency plan for the Red Lake School District and that it failed to follow through on developing and implementing crisis plans. The lawsuits claimed MacNeil failed to develop a plan as recommended by the U.S. Department of Education and instead provided the school district with plans that were confusing and contained conflicting directions for staff.
It took until September 2008 for the families of victims and survivors to reach a settlement with MacNeil. The judge overseeing the civil suit was charged with dividing up the $1.5 million settlement in October 2008.
Long story short, even when you have a crisis plan in place, things can still go wrong. As unfortunate as it is to say, the worst school shooting since Columbine quickly turned into the biggest cluster EVER. Yes, people grieved for those individuals that lost their lives or were wounded, but the nation was more concerned with following the lawsuit proceedings.
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I have to agree with you in saying that more publicity was given to the lawsuit proceedings. It's unfortunate that in today's world money seems to be the driving force behind too many things.
ReplyDeleteThe victims were real people and just because we aren't right there to witness it, doesn't it make any less real. The families of the victims will live with the loss of their loved one everyday. The pain never goes away, but they will have their treasured memories.
The news media needs to let the families have piece and not worry about publicizing the settlement.
This is a really sad story. I am glad they had a plan at this school for a crisis such as this, but from the sounds of it the plan wasn't a complete plan. If the lawsuit was because MacNeil was a faulty crisis program planner. Could more kids have been saved?
ReplyDeleteI don't think the media should have covered more lawsuit than the actual shooting. The whole thing is really sad, but maybe more lawsiut was covered due to the fact it could have revealed how this crisis could have been averted or at least lessened.
Speaking of developing plans and what nots, when I was still in high school they were slow changing things so that the building was pretty much totally secure. And if someone unexpected were to walk in, there was a plan and everyone would be somehow safe. They had set up cameras in the hallways and allowed access in only one door during the day.
ReplyDeleteBut after incidents like this and the Columbine shootings, I'm sure school just get more secure. Who knows how the outcome would've been if MacNeil would've actually have done their part though. Plans that you think are unbreakable, unbeatable can be broken and beaten.
Money hungry people, however, make things like this look more like that, a money thing.
I dont think it was right that everyone seemed to be more worried about the lawsuit proceeding then they were with all of the casualties. I think that part of the reason that the school never fully had a crisis management plan was simply because they didnt expect anything like this to actually happen to them, no one does. If you were going to tell me to put a crisis plan in place for VCSU in case someone does something similar to this, I would not be too worried that this would actually happen here.
ReplyDeleteLiving outside of the community I find it interesting that I did not hear much about the initial incident but more about what happened after the crisis. I am sometimes surprised by what the media considers a story and would have thought I would have heard more about this tragedy.
ReplyDeleteIt is good that the school had a plan in place for an crisis such as this yet awful that it is necessary that a school had to have a plan such as this.
It is terrible when companies claim to help in planning for emergencies and fail to follow through with the actual training and implementation of a crisis plan. There are regulations for to run a hospital, bank, government there should also be regulations for companies such as these.
I think that its good that the nation worried more about the law suits more than the people.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I say its good is because things like these can be prevented with good planning. I can see my own High School, which was in a small town in Southwest MN, not take this law serious. They probably came up with a plan but nothing they actually thought they would ever use. Another good reason I think that its good is that the people that lost loved ones don't need the media in their faces all the time, especially in a time like that.