For a school attack to take place three elements must be present at the same time. If any one of these elements are not present, violence will not occur. If all three of these elements are present simultaneously the crime, violence, or attack will happen.

Those three elements are 1) Desire, 2) Ability, and 3) Opportunity.

Desire:
How badly the person wants to do it?

Ability:
Does the person have the skill set?

Opportunity:
Does the person have the chance or opportunity to do it?

Of the three, which one do you think is the hardest to influence or eliminate? Which one is the easiest?

By far, desire is the hardest to remove because it means getting inside a person’s head and making them no longer wish for or desire something. That’s incredibly difficult, time consuming, and often complicated.

The easiest to remove is opportunity because that’s totally up to you. It’s the quickest and usually the most effective element to remove because you’re eliminating it yourself.

A couple of examples of how it all works together…

1. Lots of anti-bullying programs start with trying to get the bully to no longer want to hurt someone else. That’s desire and it’s the hardest to influence. Instead, increase supervision of the students therefore removing the opportunity for it to happen. Should the bully still want to act it will require greater effort (ability).  


2. You perfect your lockdown. A person attacks the school but teachers can lockdown all classrooms within 7 seconds. The attacker desperately wants to get into the classrooms (desire) but can’t because the teachers have locked down (no opportunity). He tries to kick the door open but can’t (no ability). The frames are made of steel and the doors are too solid (no opportunity).


3. Every morning you stand outside and greet the students. You’re energized, engaged, and vigilant. 70% of all school attackers are current or previous students. A student wants to attack the school (desire) but he sees you fully engaged each morning. He knows that he must get by you and it won’t be easy (reduced opportunity). Therefore, he must do something different so he begins to plan for a way around you.


4. In the case of Uvalde, a troubled and broken young person wanted to attack the school (desire). He had guns and the ability to use them. He was able to enter the building through an open door (opportunity).


5. You have a student who has made a threat to attack the school (desire). You begin a threat assessment and find the student to be a danger to themselves and others (desire & ability). You begin to counsel, guide, and help the student. Getting him to choose something else besides violence is difficult (desire). You implement an intervention and management plan which has several requirements such as the student must arrive early before morning arrival, can’t ride the bus, can’t carry a backpack, and must leave early each day (removing/reducing opportunity).

As you can see, reducing or removing opportunity is the easiest and often the most effective because we have total control over it and to remove it often requires small things like locking a door. As you consider your next steps to make your school safer, always start first with removing opportunity.

It doesn’t mean that you will or should ignore the other two elements. Working on one also impacts the other two.

If you remove opportunity, the person will have to delay in order to obtain a higher skill set (ability). This delay may help to diminish their desire since they can’t do it or don’t believe they will get away with it.

Either way, work first on removing opportunity. Do the little things. Lock doors, perfect your lockdowns, engage with your students and these efforts will reward you with big victories.

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If you’d like to prepare and inspire your teachers, consider scheduling a Safe & Loved teacher professional development. Presentations can be 3-8 hours long and fit perfectly into in-service training.

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