David Riedman
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
It's very popular for organizations to describe themselves as learning cultures. We're going to experiment and we're going to try, but school safety can't be a learning culture. Because the consequences of a failure are too serious. That is David Riedman. I'm the founder of the K-12 school shooting database, and I'm the only person that records every shooting at a school in the United States.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
What happened in the middle of college is I had been a volunteer in the fire department since I was 16 years old. And when Hurricane Katrina happened, I felt that I couldn't be sitting in a classroom amid this national disaster. So I took a leave of absence and I began working as a reservist for FEMA. And I worked on disaster recovery and response on New Orleans.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And that really started my career in emergency management, which then progressed into Homeland Security and Intelligence. I worked in various roles on the contractor side in just about every capacity from science and technology, through emergency planning, through intelligence analysis. monitoring watch centers. I'm really a Homeland Security generalist.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And ultimately, that led me to the Naval Postgraduate School, where this school shooting database project started.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
The database is not just a date and a link. Each incident is carefully set up with standardized continuous or categorical variables. There are more than 200 different variables about the who, what, where, when, and how, but also information about the location, about the situation, the shooter, the victims, the weapons used, and then lots of pieces that add extra context within the school day.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
You know, where in the school building did it occur? During what period of the school day? Morning classes? Lunch?
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Oh, easily 40 hours a week. I get about 30 Google alerts every morning at 7 a.m. And the first 90 minutes to two hours of my day are going through those Google alerts and updating the database, transferring narrative data from a news report
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
into relational database data that's coded in all of these ways that can easily be sorted and filtered for just about any research question is a time-consuming process and something that is not easily automatable.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think that it's both empirical based on looking at now thousands of incidents and philosophical because... As you said, leading up to that shooting, there's this causal chain of actions. And with each one of those actions, there's either a right or a wrong decision that could be made. And one right decision is going to break that chain.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think an incident that really highlights this is the Oxford High School shooting in November 2021. This is in Michigan, Oxford Township, Michigan? In Michigan, yes. There were four students killed there. Seven wounded. But leading up to this attack, just four days prior, the parents bought the 15-year-old shooter a gun. And he posted pictures with it online.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And then the day prior to the attack, he was caught Googling bullets. His teacher saw this and made a report of it. So everyone should have been on high alert. Students were on high alert because there were rumors circulating of a school shooting. You get to the morning of the shooting. He's taking a test. And on the test, he draws a picture of himself committing a school shooting.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And the teacher sees this test, is clearly worried, and sends him to the guidance counselor's office. The guidance counselor could have called police or asked other staff members to come in and help her. The guidance counselor did a suicide screening, but she didn't interpret the results in a way that would show that he was actively suicidal.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
The parents could have checked the gun safe before they got to the counselor's office and seen the gun was gone.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Yes, Stephen. He had the gun in his backpack. And at any point, one of those adults could have looked in his backpack. His parents also could have said that he has told them that he's actively suicidal. He was telling his parents, he was sending text messages saying that he was having bad thoughts. He wanted to hurt himself. He wanted to hurt others.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
The guidance counselor then could have said, you know, he probably shouldn't go back to the classroom. Why doesn't he go for a formal mental health evaluation? And lastly, the parents could have thought, there are all of these different things going on here. Why don't we just take him home? But they didn't do that.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
We have no national guidance and no common playbook for how a school official is supposed to react to the threat of a school shooting. It's on people to essentially make it up when they're in these circumstances. After 9-11,
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
The public was engaged in preventing terrorism, and we created the See Something, Say Something program, and every citizen knew what to look out for and knew what actions to take. And from taking those actions, you would immediately get the attention of federal resources that would make sure there was an investigation. That's what we've never done in the context of school shootings.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
We tell people to look for red flags, but we haven't given clear action to take. And even if that action is taken, there's nothing to make sure that that information doesn't fall through the cracks. There's a multi-billion dollar school security industry. It's based on people's assertions about what they think might be good ideas for school security. But none of it is based on empirical evidence.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Even the procedures of run, hide, fight are not rooted in any empirical study. On the softer side, I think that we have proven strategies and systems that could really be a model for this. We have a national poison control center. It has a $25 million per year budget, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $3 billion that's being spent on physical security at schools.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And with the National Poison Control Center, if you're worried that you or someone you know has ingested a poison, you can call a number from anywhere in the country and get somebody on the phone. They have expert knowledge. They're going to give you immediate actions to take. they're gonna connect you to the resources that are around you, and they're gonna help you make a plan to get there.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
We could take that same model and apply it to a national crisis center where we tell people to look for red flags.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think the national crisis center would be more than school shootings, even more than mass shootings. Because what we've seen leading up to a mass shooting or leading up to a school shooting is a person who's in crisis and they're actively suicidal.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And within that umbrella of somebody being suicidal and in crisis, you can also have self-harm, you can have physical and psychological abuse, you can have substance abuse. And this would be a resource that would provide services across all of those different major issues.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
a one-stop resource where somebody who is concerned that they're seeing the red flags in a friend or classmate or coworker can go and get assistance, get a plan of action. That is paired with investment in community crisis intervention training as well as violence interruption programs because we know that community violence interruption programs have been successful to prevent shootings.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
It is. Really, the biggest objection is the thought that if there's a tip line and red flag laws, that that will lead to guns being taken away from somebody. That if you have a widely available system of reporting, that somebody who is an innocent gun owner will have an anonymous report made against them and then have their gun seized.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think that that's a very difficult policy question to answer because it comes down to the philosophical point of do you care about the public good or do you care about your individual freedoms? And I try to look at history and look at the context for these events. And following Ruby Ridge and Waco and Oklahoma City, We put very significant restrictions on who is allowed to buy explosives.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
But I fear that this is an issue that's far too polarized. And I get death threats just for reporting school shootings. Can you describe one? Oh, yeah. I get emails that say, you know, we're going to find you and you'll be eviscerated in front of your family. So it's a very careful path that one has to walk.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And I really try to objectively report a problem that is in every community and every part of the country over now a 60-year period of modern history. And I do that in really an objective manner that can be studied for just about any research purposes. I'm also extraordinarily hopeful because far more shootings are averted than attacks that happen.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
A student walked into the bathroom and he found a bullet that was sitting upright on the toilet seat. And he knew that something was wrong. So he went and he found the school resource officer, the vice principal, the principal, and a teacher and told all of them there's a problem because he wanted to make sure that he was heard. And they took him seriously.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
They watched the surveillance footage, figured out which student had left the bathroom, and they detained a student. And in his backpack, he had a loaded handgun, three loaded magazines, a hit list, and a written plan to commit a shooting that day. And that is because these mass shootings and these school shootings are public suicides.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And somebody is going to cry for help until the moment right before the attack. And that bullet was left there, hoping somebody would find it. And that's the opportunity that we have. If somebody knows what to do and has someone to talk to, we can prevent almost every one of these attacks.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
For their book, they interviewed convicted mass shooters in jail. And one of the questions that they asked each person they interviewed is who could have prevented the shooting? And the answer they got was anyone could have prevented the shooting.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think that's why we need this system where the public knows the red flags, knows that there's somebody in crisis, and then has a system to get that person help. There's a gentleman named Aaron Stark, and he did a TED Talk about when he plotted a school shooting when he was in high school. He was a victim of serious abuse at home.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And he thought that this school shooting would be something that would finally really get back at his parents. He had bought the gun and he had the plan. And there was one classmate who reached out to him and said, why don't you come over to my house and have some lunch and let me get you a clean shirt. And that one act of kindness showed him that his life had value.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And he never committed that shooting.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Here is David Riedman again, the school shooting researcher. And I think that that's what we're missing. In fortification of the schools, in adding school police officers, in creating all of these levels of fortresses around schools and public spaces, the person that ultimately wants to commit a mass shooting is somebody who's very, very deeply hurt.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And rather than trying to keep that person further out and demonize that person even further, if we can just show them a tiny bit of kindness, you know, a lot of these shootings would never happen. Probably none of these shootings would happen.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
In October 2002, there were 17 different random sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C. area. And there was no clue as to why they were happening and where the next one was going to be. So there were two gentlemen, one older, one a teenager, The older man was the car driver. The younger man laid in the back and fired through a hole that they had made in the trunk.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And they drove to random locations and shot people. And they were only caught when they started leaving clues, which eventually led to their arrest. And that was three weeks where really going to school every day, there was genuine fear that you weren't going to come home. We left the school in groups of five, running in a zigzag pattern.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And that really framed, I think, a lot of my future experiences around school shootings and gun violence.