Author Description

School safety and the attacks at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech are the subjects of four major government reports reproduced in this important book. Safe School Initiative: Littleton, Colorado; Springfield, Oregon; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas. These communities have become familiar to many Americans as the locations where school shootings have occurred in recent years. School shootings are a rare, but significant, component of school violence in America. In June 1999, following the attack at Columbine High School, our two agencies-the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education-launched a collaborative effort to begin to answer these questions. The result was the Safe School Initiative, an extensive examination of 37 incidents of targeted school shootings and school attacks that have occurred in the United States beginning with the earliest identified incident in 1974 through June 2000. Wanton Violence at Columbine High School: This report is an analysis of the fire service and emergency medical service (EMS) operations and the overall response to the assault on Columbine High School at Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999. Incident command, special operations, and mass casualty emergency medical services are featured. In any major incident, the efforts of all public safety personnel are inexorably linked. However, this report does not address the overall law enforcement operations, or the concurrent operations of various police commands, the special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams, or the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) units. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office issued a formal report and has released surveillance video and radio transmissions that provide additional information on law enforcement's efforts during this incident. Virginia Tech: On April 21, 2007, in response to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, President George W. Bush directed Secretaries Michael Leavitt and Margaret Spellings and Attorney General A