Massive shootings in schools have significantly affected various aspects of the community across the US states. School shooting was first recognized as a public problem among the United States society in 1960 where it has drastically increased ever since in severity and frequency (Kennedy, 2018). Despite that school shootings are scarcer than off-campus violence, homicide, and mass murder, the number of casualties has increased steadily since 1990, thus impacting the American communities. Tactics and techniques used by law enforcement and school administrations transform from time to time to match the growing threats. The Columbine high school shooting in 1999 and Texas university in 1966 cases have pioneered the tactics of law enforcement change. Kennedy (2018) indicates that the Columbine and the UT Austin between 2000 and 2015 are landmarks examples as the country has experienced over 45 school shootings. Attacks in Marjory Stoneman High School and Sandy Hook Elementary School have created the need for changes in law enforcement and school administrations as the current procedures fail to counter the rising threats. The most significant the schools and law enforcers face is criminal profiling and identifying motivating actors of such cases among learners. Therefore, administration bodies in learning institutions and law enforcers must develop criteria for creating criminal profiles to capture unidentified criminals before they cause more harm to the community.
Criminal profiling is a tool involving dramatic and sensational elements of understanding the nature of crime in terms of likely offender characteristics and a criminal’s personality. Similar to the Colorado school shooting, most of the shooters are students. To create a criminal profile for in a case of a school shooting, the following is critical;
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Studying a crime scene to identify any clues that can lead to the identification of the criminal; Using the modus operandi profilin rationale, the scene characteristics are identified, which may point at the perpetrator's personality.
Knowing the perpetrators' motives: Most shootings in schools result from a learner seeking vengeance, mental disorders and exposure to criminal activities. In a case where the criminal is unidentified such as in this case, students should be interviewed to identify any learner who would have challenging characteristics that would lead to the shooting.
Interviews and questioners; The school’s students and teachers, social workers, mental health physicians, parents and victims should be interviewed ( Holly Yan, 2019) .
Linkage analysis; Linking the shooting's characteristics with other occurred shootings with similar characteristics will help create a criminal profile that can lead to the apprehending of the criminal ( Kateryniuk, 2017) .
Criminal profiling aims at identifying a criminal who manages to get away after a shooting. It thought to identify them as, in most cases, the offenders are students who leave most victims dead; thus, no one can locate them. However, most school shootings crimes have similar characteristics, which can be used as linkages to identify a possible criminal. School shootings are mainly motivated by anger and mental disorders, such as in Santa Fe High School , where Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a seventeen-year-old student, murdered 11 people ( Keneally, 2019) . The student had posted written journals of his intentions indicating that interviewing involved stakeholders can lead to creating a criminal profile that would help capture the criminal. Additionally, Keneally (2019) suggests that in Red Lake Senior High School shooting where Jeff Weise, a 16-year-old student murder his grandfather and girlfriend then drove to the school he attended and killed seven students. In cases where the criminal is at large, the crime scene is the most significant source of information in criminal profiling. Therefore, by examining the crime scene thoroughly, there are high chances of finding clues about the criminal. After gathering the necessary information needed, the profilin is done where the authorities and the school administration use it to identify the criminal and a guide for interviewing the suspects. Students use the internet to communicate and pass information. Therefore, information should be gathered from the internet during criminal profiling, such as the Red Lake school shooting case.
References
Holly Yan, McLean, S., Maxouris, C., & Almasy, S. (2019). Suspects in Colorado school shooting make first court appearances. Retrieved 22 May 2021, from https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/08/us/denver-stem-school-shooting-wednesday/index.html
Kateryniuk, L. (2017). Criminological Profiling in FBI's Investigation Activities: Effective Investigative Technique or Scientific Myth. Law Rev. Kyiv UL , 316.
Kennedy, D. F. (2018). The School Shooter: A Rapidly Growing Problem for Homeland Security . Naval Postgraduate School Monterey United States.
Keneally, M. (2019). The 11 mass deadly school shootings that happened since Columbine. Retrieved 22 May 2021, from https://abcnews.go.com/US/11-mass-deadly-school-shootings-happened-columbine/story?id=62494128
