School Shooting Prevention In Toms River Takes Multilayered Approach

TOMS RIVER, NJ — If you drove past Toms River Intermediate North on Nov. 9, you may have seen a large police presence outside the school.

With schools closed for the annual teachers convention, the Toms River Police Department and other law enforcement entities were taking the opportunity to conduct an active shooter response drill at the school.

While the drills aim to improve police response to an active shooter situation at any of the Toms River district's 18 schools, much more effort and energy is directed at preventing a school shooting in the district, local and state officials said a recent meeting of the Toms River Regional Schools' Super Safe Committee.

The goal is to make its staff and students feel safe in the schools every day, Superintendent Michael Citta said, so they can concentrate on learning.

The Toms River Regional District is one of the state leaders in its security, said Thomas Gambino, a specialist with the state Department of Education's Office of School Preparedness and Emergency Planning.

"It's important for parents to understand your schools are safe to begin with," Gambino said.

What makes schools more safe is a culture of respect, said Jeff Gale, director of the education department's Office of School Preparedness and Emergency Planning.

"Climate and culture means a helluva lot in a school setting," Gale said. "We as adults have to monitor and model that behavior."

Because in the majority of mass shootings, particularly school shootings, the shooter is someone who has a grievance, Gale said.

"These are not driven by mental health disorders," Gale said. "Mentally ill people are not more violent than other people. These (shootings) are about grievances, grievances and poor coping skills."

"(Grievances and poor coping skills) are the dynamics we see unfold over and over and over again," said Gale, who is a retired New Jersey State Trooper and has spent his second career focused on school security and safety. The shooters believe violence is going to resolve a problem that no one else has helped them address, and they see it as a positive resolution.

The shooters rarely have a plan that ends with them escaping to start a new life. Many times they take their own lives, or seek suicide by police, he said.

An examination of mass shootings shows that in most cases, the shooter had been driven toward concerning behaviors, from an obsession with firearms to anger over something where they felt wronged to a pattern of blaming everyone else, including those who could not or would not "fix" the issue.

That's why one of the key efforts is behavioral threat assessment, Gale and Gambino said. Every school district in New Jersey has staff who are trained to identify people who might be at risk of using a gun. That threat assessment was developed from a community-based threat assessment created by the U.S. Secret Service.

There are procedures in place for responding to tips about situations where someone is identified as a potential threat, from parents, from other students, from staff members. District administration can call Toms River Police Chief Mitch Little and Deputy Chief Patrick Dellane at any hour of the day or night, said James Ricotta, assistant superintendent who oversees the district's security programs.

That includes instances arising from software the district uses that flags internet searches and language used on the district's computers, including the Chromebooks issued to students.

If concerning language is flagged by the software, the parents are called immediately, Assistant Superintendent Cara DiMeo said.

The Toms River Regional schools have taken other steps. Some are visible, such as the new security vestibules at all of the district's school buildings with separate entrances for visitors and for staff.

There are armed full-time police officers and Class 3 officers in the schools, and district officials are in regular contact with the police department. There are regular security reviews of all of the district's buildings.

All of the schools have panic buttons to alert police immediately, in response to a state law requiring them.

There are practical safety items and measures that exist not only for school shootings but general emergencies. Every building has an automatic external defibrillator and multiple staff members trained to use it in case someone has a heart attack. Staff members have received training for understanding students who have an epilepsy disorder. There are bleeding control kits, not only for use in case of a shooting but if someone falls or otherwise suffers a serious, heavily bleeding cut.

There is screening technology in place, too. A software program called the Raptor system checks the background of every person who comes to the district's schools, Ricotta said. It screens for registered sex offenders, and every person who comes in — parent, family member, school volunteer, visitor — is checked.

People have been "denied access to schools because of the information on Raptor" that identified them as registered sex offenders, Ricotta said, including some cases where family members were unaware of issues with people on their approved pick-up lists.

"I won't say it has happened every week" but it has happened frequently, Ricotta said.

The Raptor system also keeps track of every person who is in a building in the district, from staff and students to parent volunteers, he said. Parent volunteers are not permitted to wander and are always with a certificated staff member, Ricotta said.

Gale said the key to the behavioral threat assessment is understanding that it's a community effort. How someone appears to their family may not be how they appear to teachers, to their peers or even to someone they randomly encounter in the community.

In mass shootings, "people around the person were concerned," he said. Over time the investigation shows "everyone has a little piece of the puzzle," from seeing the person acquiring firearms to becoming more detached from society and more angry, to comments made seemingly at random.

"It's a 360-degree approach," Gale said. "Not everyone sees someone in the same light."

"If you see something that makes you uncomfortable, speak up," he said.

Taryn Ritacco, an assistant prosecutor and sergeant in the juvenile justice division of the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, said the prosecutor's office is focused on building and growing empathy in the schools, to try to head off the bullying and the behavior that creates so much anger and angst. They also are working to make sure kids understand the law, and understand that things they may think are harmless, like social media threats or posts harassing others carry significant consequences.

"If kids don't know something's a crime how can we prevent it?" she said. "It's all about the kids. You can't learn and you can't grow and you can't be creative if you don't feel safe."

Gale said one of the keys is for parents to listen, particularly if they are warned that their child is exhibiting concerning behaviors.

"I can give you example after example of parents who don't listen," he said, citing the parents in the Oxford, Michigan, school shooting where the teen had a firearm his parents had purchased in his backpack and refused to take him home. Those parents are set to stand trial on involuntary manslaughter in 2024, according to an Associated Press report.

"Know that 65 percent of the weapons come from a home or a family member," Gale said, urging those who own firearms to make sure they are being responsible. "Do you have that weapon locked up?"

Adults need to do a much better job of modeling respect, he said, pointing to the fiery language and namecalling that pervades much of society today.

"We should be respecting each other and listening," Gale said.