SRO Responds to Latest School Shooting

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Security and crime prevention expert Katherine Smith Torres, who was
a police officer for more than twenty years and once
worked as a school resource officer. Catherine, good morning, Good.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
To have you on good Morning.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
We've been trying to figure out here, as I guess
all Americans are, in the wake of this, that this
kid was on the FBI radar and law enforcement radar
for well over a year. They didn't find any probable
cause to take any further action, but still he was
known to be a potential problem, and yet he got

(00:34):
into this school building with a firearm. From what we
know of the background here, what should have or could
have been done?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, I thoroughly believe that we go back and we
have to find out how did he get into the
school with it? An ar style raffle is not just
some little tiny handgun that you can secret in your pocket,
are in a small bag. How the school's interry security

(01:04):
has to be in question. But what's more in question
is they talked to the parents of this child. They
talked to the father of this child back last year
when this threat was made. The kid said he didn't
have any intention of He denied everything, but the father
knew about it, and when they asked about the father's

(01:26):
guns that he had, he said, well, he doesn't have
any unsupervised access to the guns, but he got a gun.
So that tells me that the father knew that this
threat had happened a year ago, and he did not
secure his weapons at home. They have to be locked down.
You can't have an ar style rifle that you have

(01:47):
immediately immediate access to in case of a burglar in
the house. You need to put those ars, lock them
up where the kids cannot get access at all.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, or farm.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, of course, any firearm, but an ar style kills
too many too quickly. I mean, it's just the rapid
action of that gun causes a lot more death that
a child can do and our child or anybody can
do in just a short period of time. So I
think we have to look at a lot of responsibility

(02:23):
on the father this time. But what I feel is
the most important thing is looking at the parents giving
these kids permission to play violent video games that sort
a child's psyche to thinking that all the shooting is normal.
They see it, they breathe, they take this stuff in

(02:47):
every day. They are participating in the video game of
shooting people. And I just don't think that that is
right for kids to be engaged in that. Their minds
are not prepared to deal with the long term consequences

(03:07):
of killing people at the age of thirteen and fourteen.
I don't think even adults need to be engaged. It's
different if it's a war game, but that's for later
on in their lives. They don't need to be engaged
in that kind of stuff at this age.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well, yeah, because whatever small percentage of them are going
to have a screw loose and they're going to be affected.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, but it's not healthy for anyone to play it.
They can play other kinds of games. They don't have
to play games where they're killed to somebody.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
OK, and now we're into policing what people do individually.
It's a slippery slope, but it's a point worth arguing.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Catherine, thank you, always good to get more input. I
appreciate your time. Catherine spent Tares on kfab's Morning News. Yeah,
you know, this video game thing is always brought up.
Can you imagine how many tens of millions of kids
play these games all the time, all the time we're

(04:07):
talking about can you imagine how many tens of hundreds
of mili. Well, I don't know what the number is
that of kids that we have in schools in this country.
So statistically this is extraordinarily very rare, rare. Well, what's
what what's not rare is irresponsible parenting in the case,
especially in a case you got, I got a kid

(04:28):
that might have an issue here, right, you know, and
she's exactly right, unless he stole that gun or something.
And then of course, how did he get it in there?
If it's if it's an ar style, you can't conceal
that in your pocket, and I mean, it's just it's.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
And how did he steal it? If if well, I
don't know. Well, the sheriff is.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Suggesting that if the dad didn't have leave access to him,
then he got it somehow. Well, the.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
County sheriff took over the case from the Georgia Bureau
of Investigations last year, and they did the interviewing of
the dad. They did the interviewing of the kid, and
the dad insisted, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but
he doesn't have access to these guns. Show me how
he doesn't have access to these guns? Well, they're in
this cabinet right here. Okay, well that's it. That's not

(05:16):
hard to break into. What happens if you leave and
he goes gets to crowbar. Show me how these are
in a place where they can't get to them. Now,
that would be a red flag to me that the
county sheriff, for a sheriff's deputy could say, no, wait
a minute, hold on. We've seen Facebook posts, we've seen
social media posts. We have some inclination that your son

(05:37):
has a disturbance. You're saying to me, he doesn't have
access to your guns. I look at that cabinet and say,
he does have access to your guns. You need to
show me how he can't get to those when you're
not here. Now, that is reasonable to me. That's not
taken away the dad's guns. That's not putting the kid
in a in some sort of psychiatric treatment program unless

(05:59):
it's next necessary. I think that's being a responsible law
enforcement of.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
I don't know. I think the approp the appropriate response
to that from the father might be none of your business.
If you want to, if you want to warrant, come
in here. Really, that could be his right now. The
officer could, would you mind, would you mind showing me yeah, demand.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, it's in the approach of course.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
All right, Rosie, onto sports brief now, why are you