042424 Laura Carno

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Episode Transcript

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On the program. This hour broughtto you by Dan Caaplis dan Kaplis Law,
a serious firm for serious cases.I am Jimmy Lakey. Pleasure to
be here with you on the radioshow. If you want to jump in
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Lakey fan page, the Twitter ofthe Truth social those are just my name,
Jimmy Lakey and also my friends.I can tell you my phone number
eight six six triple eight fifty fourforty nine, eighty six six triple eight
fifty four to forty nine. Justa couple of days ago, we commemorated
the twenty fifth anniversary of the ColumbineHigh School massacre. Last week, I

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had Evan Todd, Columbine High Schoolsurvivor on the program and before the website
broke, that's actually that webs thatthat interview is actually up there right now,
is not waiting to be posted.It is up there. If you
miss my conversation with Evan Todd lastweek, that's at Jimmy Laky dot com.
You can find that he survived withgot a bullet and some shrapnel,

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but he got out of there withhis life. At Columbine twenty five years
ago, and I started asking Vinon that interview and even Lea before and
after I was talking to Devin,I said, we said we'd never forget.
Did we forget? Did we changeanything? As anything better or your
kids safer? And this week,as I was pondering and filming as Something
Else with Evan Todd, the questioncontinues to ring in my head, and

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I wanted to bring Laura Carno onthe program. Longtime commentator here on this
radio show, but has now focusedher efforts fully on Faster Colorado dot org,
which is all about helping to keepthe kids safe at the school grounds
on the campuses. So I wantedher to come on the program and talk
about this very question. What haschanged? What are we doing better twenty

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five years later? Did we learnany lessons after Columbine? And Laura Carr
was on the hotline. Now,good morning, miss Carno. How are
you? Good morning? I'm doingvery well. Thank you. We used
to have Carno Tuesday. This wouldbe if you're listening in real time this
would be Carno Wednesday. But everyday it's a Carno day. That's what
we like to say around here.Yes, exactly when we were talking about

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when to come on, I thought, well, it's got to be a
Tuesday, right, but we didn'thave Tuesday available. So here we are.
Here we are Tuesday and Carno.Every day is a Carno day.
Never forget that in your life.And her website, by the way,
if you miss her, is FasterColorado dot org or Lauracarno dot com.
Laura, you've just heard the setupthere. I was talking to Evan Todd

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this week a couple of times commemoratingthe twenty fifth anniversary of the Columbine High
School shooting. And I think allof us that were paying attention at the
time can remember the stories and thevideo of a student's climbing out windows,
law enforcement standing out hiding behind vehicles, and that was twenty five years ago.
Kids died, Politicians argued about gunsand gun control. My question is

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did we learn anything? What didwe learn? What has changed? And
just give me your thoughts there takeit from there. Yeah, you know,
I think there's a couple of bucketsof things to talk about here.
The first one is law enforcement,what is law enforcement done to change and
how has that worked? And thesecond is what are schools doing different and

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how has that changed and what's working. So, you know, let me
start with law enforcement and we cango from there. So, the standard
response to active killer events back duringColumbine twenty five years ago was for the
first law enforcement officer that got theirassessed the situation, established a perimeter.

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Others that are responding, get themon the perimeter, wait for swat to
get their hostage negotiation, that sortof thing. And it kind of had
this same feel as pre nine toeleven. What did we do when there
was a hijacking? We obeyed thehijacker and we you know, diverted the

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plane to Cuba or wherever the hijackerwanted to go because it wasn't in our
heads at the time that they couldfly a plane into the building. Well,
during Columbine's era, it wasn't inour heads that there could be a
mass shooting. It was typically thosethings were more of hostage events. So
law enforcements significantly changed their response afterwardto first guy to get there guy or

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gal, first guy to get there, go in. There are children dying,
there are school staff dying, Getin there and stop the killing.
And I'm putting this in very paraphraseterms on what changed. So that was
what was supposed to happen. Soby and large, you look at a

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Rapaho high schoo for example, therewas a school resource officer on campus who
sprinted toward the library, didn't waituntil other law enforcement got there, went
after it knew that there was aprospective shooter, ran got there, and
his arrival is presumably what caused thatkiller to commit suicide. Does it always

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work? Well, well, let'sjust take a look at Parkland, at
Marjorie Stone in Douglas High School inParkland, Florida, where the coward of
Broward, that school resource officer literallyjust hung outside while you could hear shots
in the background, so didn't dowhat was supposed to have been changed.

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And then you look at Uvaldi wherethere was a failure of leadership there for
sure, who said we're not goingin until we have the keys, We're
not going in until we have ballisticshields, We're not going in, and
tel and tell and tell, andthat whole classroom full of children and two
teachers lost their lives. So whenit's done properly and the law enforcement does

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what the lessons of Columbine were,than lives are saved. When they don't,
do, you know, follow thoselessons of Columbine for law enforcement,
lives are lost. And I'll pausethere the voice of Laura Carno talking about
what has changed twenty five years later. I think you bring up some fantastic
examples, Uvaldi. Of course,I mean literally, they were outside the

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classroom, listening to the bullets fireand doing absolutely nothing and Partland of course,
that's the first one that comes tomy mind. So this is actually
taught to law enforcement now in schoolshootings. And I guess other that the
perimeter to be damned with the perimeter, you got to get in there and
run towards the run towards the tragedy. It's just something agency by agency because

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obviously we're told it changed after Columbine, didn't change in Texas, didn't seem
to change in Florida. Is thisactual training or is just what we hope
they do. Yeah, that's agood question. So the law enforcement officers
who are faster instructors, there areall law enforcement instructors and they teach for
Faster. What they tell me isthat this is standard protocol of what is

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taught to law enforcement, and thatis the expectation and what they are supposed
to do. So I suppose thereare some agencies out there that got missed,
but in twenty five years, thisis the standard of what's taught.
So you know, I would saythat the school resource officer in Parkland knew

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precisely what he was supposed to do, but he was what they refer to
as retired on duty that he wasbeing put out to pastor before he retired.
He had no incentive to go inthere and save children's lives. That
it wasn't part of his make up. He was just waiting to retire.
So that's a mindset problem where youknow, we love school resource officers at

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Faster. We are in favor ofall of the above to save children,
and we love that there are somany school resource officers who if something happened
God forbid on their campus, andwe've seen these responses many times throughout the
country from SROs, they're getting afterit. They that's what they that's their

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job. Their job is to savechildren and if that happens on their campus.
They are getting there, they're gettingafter it. They're stopping the killing
and saving the children. The voiceof Laura Carno. Her website Faster Colorado
dot org has dedicated our life heretoo, making sure that your kids are
safe on the school campus training GUIDs. Well, we'll kind of dive in
a little bit more what the whothey trained, but it's all about keeping

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the kids safe on the campus.We're talking about what has changed twenty five
years past the Columbine High School massacre. And Lord, we talked about law
enforcement, alot's talking about on theschool campus. Has anything changed there?
I mean, we oftentimes after theseshootings have heard or we don't want to
look like at prison kids going throughmetal detectors. That happens in some neighborhood.

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But overall, our campus is saferthan they were twenty five years ago.
Are we more are less likely tohave another one of these repeat shootings
like we did with Columbine? Well, my answer is yes and no,
and it depends on the level ofsecurity protocols that schools and school districts are

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willing to take. So I have, as you mentioned, I have significant
experience in the world of schools thathave adopted armed staff, and so this
would be sometimes instead of in smallerdistricts, and sometimes in addition to in
larger districts and school resource officers,who again we love them being in schools
for lots of reasons, but they'renot going to be able to stop everything.

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They're not going to be their fulltime, but the school staff are
so in armed school staff schools,typically there are many armed faculty peppered throughout
the school and they are concealed carryso that means that a prospective killer does
not know where they are, unlikeuniformed security or school resource officers. Most

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armed schools now have signs outside thatsay they have armed staff, and we
think that that's a big deterrent fromschool shooters coming onto those campuses. And
we've seen according to Crimeresearch dot Org, we've seen that there have been zero
school shootings in schools with armed staff, and that's a great trend line zero.

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Meanwhile, there are still school shootingsat other schools, so we know
that there's that deterrent effect. Theother thing we see Jimmy on these armed
campuses is more protocol that have nothingto do with who's armed. But they
know that if somebody comes onto campusthat has to be stopped. They know

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how that ends. They know thatnobody gets out of that endscage. Everybody
is going to be affected by that, so they don't want it to happen.
So we see better perimeter security.We see more eyes and ears on
playgrounds. For example. We seesometimes I go to these schools for meetings

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and I am met in the parkinglot by an adult because I am an
unknown person there. Those are thethings that I see on these armed campuses
where they take every layer of schoolsecurity more seriously. What we don't see
is that happening in unarmed schools,where there is a more lackadaisical approach to

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many aspects of school security. Andyour listeners may have seen this story on
their new stations over the last fewdays about this guy in registered sex offender
who went onto a school playground inCherry Creek School District in Aurora and tried
to take a child. How hasthat stopped other little children? This is

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an elementary school, Jimmy. Otherlittle children were screaming stranger danger because all
of the playground monitors, according tothese children, were on their cell phones.
Nobody was paying attention enough to whatwas going on in the playground that
a creepy sex defender got onto theplayground, into the field and was able

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to attempt to take a child.He was subsequently found and arrested. But
that's not the point. The schoolsthat are armed are paying a ton of
attention to all of the things tokeep the children safe. And so that's
the big difference that I'm seeing andwhy I answered yes or no. Some
schools take their security very seriously andsome and this is not the first time

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we've seen Cherry Creek School District inthe news for not keeping children safe.
Some school districts are not paying closeenough attention to all of the different layers
of school security. It's frightening.By the way, Laura Carnall my guests
go to Faster Colorado dot org ifyou want to learn more about what she's
doing. We'll give a quick plugof that here in just a moment.
But it's kind of frightening that I'mgetting old, that I'm thinking that there

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may be somebody that was like achild or a toddlerate elementary kid and they're
just now twenty five years ago.They were just children back at the Columbine
days and they're just now having kidsin the school or maybe kids in elementary
school or middle school. That Imean twenty five years ago. It was
like you and I were sitting arounda few years later talking about Pearl Harbor
back in the back in the olddays. I think people just have forgotten

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that these things, I mean thatUvaldi, Parkland, Columbine kind of changed
everything. It's so important that parentswake up and maybe they were just a
child in Colorado when Columbine happened,but they have school age kids now,
and if they're not careful, We'vegot to make sure our school districts,
in schools, if your kids arein the public school, are keeping these

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kids safe. And it's not justsome distant memory, although it probably is
for some people and they don't seethe urgency. Yeah, we can't stick
our heads in the sand and sayit can't happen here. Colorado has had
Columbine, a Rapahoe High School,and Stem School. We have had three
major school shootings here in just ourstate. We cannot put our heads in

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the sand and say it can't happenhere. It absolutely has happened here,
and we need to ask our kids'school, our grandkids' school. I mentioned
on the show that I am nowa grandparent. I think about the safety
of my two little grandkids at theirschool. We have to ask those questions,
what are your protocols if God forbid, somebody comes on to the campus

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trying to kill children and trying tokill school staffers, what are your plans?
And I need to be I needto be satisfied that you are doing
everything you can, including all ofthose things we've talked about, perimeter security
and who's keeping an eye on them, who isn't on their cell phone while
they're on the playground, those kindsof things. We need to be asking
all of those questions. These areour children. We hire the school district

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to educate them and to keep themsafe. And I've said a hundred times
on your show, and I'm goingto say it again. Having our children
returned home to us alive every dayis not a high bar. Not most
days. Every day, we expectthat they're going to be returned safe.
And it's part of the school's job, not just to educate them, but

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to keep them safe. And asparents and grandparents we need to be very
involved in those conversations. Lauracarno dotcom is her website and now Faster Colorado
dot organ The waning moments of thistime all about school safety. You're all
about helping these districts and these schoolskeep kids safe. Give us a quick
plug and how folks can get involved. Yeah, So when school districts have

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opted to go the armed staff route, they've got to get training, and
we think we offer the best trainingin the state, and that's at faster
Colorado dot org. You can findout more about that. All of our
instructors are active duties, law enforcementand first responder instructors, and we train
at law enforcement training facilities. Sothis is top notch instruction and this is

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what's going to give our school staffwho are armed the best chance of saving
lives if something happens on their campus. And hopefully school districts and leaders are
listening right now. Parents need toI'm guessing to be talking to their school
board members and superintendents and say,hey, make sure our kids are safe.
Faster Colorado dot org. Laura Carno, thanks for the reflection and conversation

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and education. Lauracarno dot com,Fast Sure, Colorado dot org. We'll
be back in a moment. NewsTalk six hundred k co OL stick around.
More to come