Oakland prosecutor launches public health campaign, toolkit to combat gun violence
Prosecutor Karen McDonald said her commission has produced an evidence-based, educational approach to address gun violence that can be used anywhere. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald has launched a public action campaign against gun violence, including a toolkit for prevention at schools, workplaces, and communities. The Commission to Address Gun Violence was formed in 2022 following the Oxford High School attack, which killed four students and injured seven others. The commission includes first responders, health experts, local elected officials, faith leaders, and individuals who have been impacted by gun violence. The report divided its work into six areas: gun violence prevention, identifying those in crisis, threat assessment, early intervention and supporting survivors. The guidelines for prevention can be used anywhere and are a simple, validated threat assessment protocol that almost anyone can learn to administer. McDonald also announced plans for the All of Us Foundation, which will urge communities, caregivers, and policymakers to use the same strategies used to tackle other top causes of death for children.
ที่ตีพิมพ์ : 3 อาทิตย์ที่แล้ว โดย Jennifer Chambers ใน Health
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald announced a public action campaign on Tuesday to address gun violence that includes a toolkit for prevention at schools, workplaces and communities and a new foundation to carry out the work.
In a press conference at Oakland Schools, the county's intermediate school district, McDonald released the results of the year-long of work the Commission to Address Gun Violence, which she formed in 2022 to address gun violence as a public health crisis in the wake of the Oxford High School attack.
The commission consists of first responders, health experts, local elected officials, faith leaders and individuals who have been impacted by gun violence. McDonald said it has produced an evidence-based, educational approach to address gun violence that can be used anywhere.
"We can prevent gun violence, but there is no 'one thing,'" McDonald wrote in the report. "Research and experience make it clear that there is no one curriculum, training, assessment, technological innovation, safety system, tactical response, or legislative solution that is going to solve this problem. The protocols for prevention laid out in this document are a start for the kind of multi-layered solution required. We have gathered data and research by the topexperts in the country."
The commission divided its work and recommendations into a 132-page report across six areas: gun violence prevention, identifying those in crisis, threat assessment, early intervention and supporting survivors. McDonald said the foundation will urge communities, caregivers, and policymakers to use the same successful strategies employed to tackle other top causes of death for children, such as automobile accidents.
The county prosecutor created the Commission to Address Gun Violence in September of 2022 as a direct result of the mass school shooting at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021 that killed four students and injured seven others. Her office sought and won criminal convictions for the three people directly involved in the attack — the gunman and his parents.
McDonald also announced plans for the All of Us Foundation, created to prevent gun violence and the launch of a website with a curriculum designed to be used across communities in places of worship, healthcare facilities and communities. McDonald was joined at the Tuesday event by Oxford shooting survivor and teacher Molly Darnell and Deleah Sharp, sister of gun violence victim and health care professional.
The protocols for prevention in the report, McDonald said, are a start for the multi-layered solution required and are “a simple, validated threat assessment protocol that almost anyone can learn to administer,” according to the document.
"We have gathered data and research by the top experts in the country. We can learn what works best in each community and then adopt the most successful approaches more widely," McDonald wrote in the document. "Working together, we can save lives now, and save many more lives in the future. We can answer the questions that we all have about how to keep our kids safe. We can transform our fears into practical and evidence-based tools and do the one thing we all want more than anything: to keep our kids safe."
The commission includes more than 20 individuals including Buck Myre, father of Tate Myre, one of the four high student killed in the Oxford attack; Det. Lt. Tim Willis with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office; a mother of a student killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and a father of a man killed in the 2012 Aurora theater shooting.
The commission provided eight steps for implementing a Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management and then offered detailed recommendations for estabishing a multidisciplinary threat assessment team for schools, communities, workplaces and higher education institutions. The advice includes who should be key members of the team, definitions of prohibited and concerning behaviors and developing a central reporting mechanism.
The report says with OK2SAY being the only state-wide reporting system and only used in schools, there is a need for a state-wide reporting system that can be used across a spectrum of organizations including schools, butalso employers and employees, faith-based organizations, and government and private-sector entities.
There are no laws requiring Michigan schools to have threat assessment training, policies, teams or guidelines — all of which are used to identify concerning behaviors and address them before they lead to violence.
Such policies, which guide school staff on how to put threat assessments into action, did not exist at Oxford High School before the attack that killed four students and left seven other people injured, the independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions found.
The Guidepost investigative report, released in October, found that Oxford High School did not ensure sufficient training of threat assessment team members, especially school mental health professionals, many of whom were unaware of the district's threat assessment process, which was established years before the attack.
Across the nation's public K-12 schools, threat assessment policies are a patchwork of approaches based on research in behavior threat assessment and management. One model of training is Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines; another is through The National Threat Assessment Center, which is part of the U.S. Secret Service.
Nine states require in-school threat assessment teams, according to Everytown For Gun Safety — and Michigan is not one of them.
The bipartisan Michigan House School Safety Task Force — formed after the Oxford attack — published a report on school safety in December 2022. The task force was established to determine policy solutions to prevent acts of violence against students and teachers. One of its recommendations was that every district and school should establish a threat assessment team.
หัวข้อ: Social Issues