On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 2:21 AM, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
1. Most people aren't nearly as good at
detecting credible threats as
they (or you) think. Police and other authorities are - there are
specific training and analysis methods involved, including psych
consults if there are certain warning flags, etc. Ask any
crisis-trained psychiatrist, law enforcement officer who investigates
these, etc.
Police and other authorities are actually quite poor at it as well.
The
fundamental problem is that there are not credible "warning signs" that
don't have extremely high rates of false positives, to the point where
around 100% of individuals distinguished by the criteria are false
positives. That's to be expected, of course, since school shootings are
extremely rare, so in statistical terms, the number of future school
shooters in any population you care to distinguish is effectively
0---you'd have to track down not 100 false positives, but hundreds of
thousands, and still might not find any legitimate positives (the number
of actual school shooters in the history of schooling is below 200). In
fact there is not a single documented case in which a report from the
public averted a school shooting. I could think of some cases where it
might at least have a nonzero chance, such as gun-shop owners reporting
suspicious attempts to purchase weapons, but Wikipedia posts aren't
among them.
-Mark, who probably fulfills a bunch of the "warning signs" himself but
discourages harrassment-via-cop, please
When I was in high school, I certainly displayed a bunch of what are
commonly interpreted as warning signs now... I had access to and
experience with firearms (target shooting with parents in the country,
and after age 16 by myself at ranges around our house), explosives and
pyrotechnics (only used for fun kabooms at beach parties), hung out
with a small social group who were in many ways misfits in the larger
school social circles, etc.
A close friend of mine was, in fact, investigated by the police and
school administration over a joke which was made (by others) while he
was on Homecoming Court our senior year. It was stunningly evident to
everyone that there had been no "threat" per se, or any capability or
intent to carry anything out, and no harm was done. Nobody got
arrested. The police and school called my friend's father, and later
met with him and his father in person at school, and it was all
friendly and professional.
The idea that we're ruining people's lives by reporting things is
balderdash. Police do not use SWAT teams to arrest kids on first
indication that there may have been a threat. We are not contributing
to societal abuse of kids who are merely different.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com