Minnesota shooting highlights risks to religious schools, amid push for more security
Before the new academic year, the staff of the Catholic School Annunciation of Minneapolis chose a scriptural theme of the Jérémie book.
“Because I know very well the plans I have for you, the plans for your well-being and not for your misfortune, plans that will offer you a future full of hope.”
The last word in this verse – Hope – did the educators wanted to emphasize during the 102nd year of the school to feed the heart and mind of his young learners. But Wednesday morning, a lonely shooter crossed the windows of the Annunciation church, where the students gathered for mass during their first week at school. Two children, aged 8 and 10, were killed. Fourteen other students and three parishioners were injured. The attacker died of an apparent self-inflicted ball injury behind the church.
Why we wrote this
The shooting of the Catholic School Annunciation of Minneapolis was the third tragedy involving a private religious school in as many years. Security has long been in mind in Jewish and Muslim schools; Now there are growing efforts in Christian school communities to strengthen their institutions.
Director Matthew Deboer at a press conference on Wednesday recognized the incongruity between the theme of the school year and the tragic attack. He called for prayers and action to stop new violence. “There is an African proverb who says,” When you pray, move your feet, “he said.” So I beg you. I ask you to pray, but don’t stop with your words. Let’s make a difference.
It was too familiar a scene when the emotional parents kissed their children outside the school and the church – now a crime scene – the day after the shooting. It is the third tragedy of this type involving a private Christian school in as many years, which increases security problems in educational circles outside traditional public schools. Private schools, frequented by around 10% of American schoolchildren, have historically experienced less school shooting than public schools. With the increase in highly publicized incidents, some expect more Christian schools more carefully examining their security protocols, as many Jewish and Muslim schools have long.
Last December, a shooting at an abundant Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, left a student and a dead teacher as well as six other injured. And in March 2023, a former student fatally killed three 9 -year -old children and three adults at Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville.
“We tend to pray to our path of any type of vigilance with this and to think that this will not happen here because of our faith,” explains Chuck Wilson, chairman of the board of directors of the alliance for Safer Schools (PASS). “We have seen … quite the opposite, where we are probably as vulnerable.”
Examine
The members of the community came in a constant flow on Thursday to lay flowers for the victims at the corner of the 54th Street and the avenue Lyndale in Minneapolis. One of these people was Diana Soller, whose circle of friends includes many Anondi announced and whose deceased mother often prayed the same Mass on Wednesday morning.
“We all experience anxiety and pain as a child. Our environment is small. And people in difficulty often aim at what they know, ”she said, referring to reports indicating that the shooter was a graduate of the school.
The authorities have identified the shooter as Robin Westman, 23, who was born Robert Westman before changing their name legally in 2020. Judicial documents show that the change happened because the petitioner “identifies as a woman and wants his name to reflect this identification”. A reason was not established for the shooting, which the attacker made with three legally purchased firearms. FBI director Kash Patel said he was an investigation as “an act of domestic terrorism and hatred crimes targeting Catholics”.
Security experts suspect that tragedy will encourage private schools to re -examine their security measures. Mr. Wilson says that the pass had already set up more requests for information from confessional school leaders who evaluated their vulnerabilities. He saw this desire for the first hand in an Iowa Lutheran school, where he was recently a member of the board of directors. The school, he says, has strengthened its safety technology with the help of donations.
“Now we are going to be flooded with people,” What could we do? ” Or what should we do? “, He said, noting the concern of copying attacks.
Mr. Wilson’s advice are not radically different from what Pass would say public schools. He underlines them towards the organization’s security and security guidelines, now in its seventh edition. The guidelines cover recommendations for digital and physical hardening, such as window films or glazings that reduce visual access and resist balls.
Security has been at the top of Jewish and Muslim schools for years, especially in the midst of an increase in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the United States. But there have been growing efforts in Christian school communities to do the same.
The need for any religious community to devote a time and resources extended to security disappoints the Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Center for Religious Action of Judaism.
“The Christian community should not have to learn from the Jewish community how to protect our communities as hardening our borders,” he said. “We should, as a company, collectively, number one – take out the firearms of the streets, the hands of people, people’s houses.”
Additional financing search
More than two years ago, the Catholic Conference of Minnesota sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz asking that non -public schools be included – and authorized to access the financing of – a safe school program. But the Catholic press agency reported that bills linked to the state legislature, which means that non -public schools have been frozen by additional funding.
The debate on what could have been done at the national level, state or local to prevent the announcement of the Annunciation will probably continue in the foreseeable future. Security experts claim that an examination at the level of the School of Security Policy is always welcome and necessary, in particular at the start of a new academic year. But they also point out that school shootings, although more common in recent decades and traumatic for affected people, remain statistically rare.
On Wednesday, the tragedy of Minneapolis marked the 434th shot from the school from the massacre of the Columbine High School in 1999, according to a database compiled by the Washington Post. The list includes a variety of situations, including car shots and arguments that have broken out in the shots in the school parking lots.
The point to remember for all schools, public or private, should be the need for a balance, explains Amy Klinger, director of programs for the educator’s school security network.
“We must be aware and prepared for the potential of armed violence, but we must also be also concerned about things that happen daily that are also horrible and unacceptable,” she said.
Dr. Klinger cited bad weather and severe medical emergencies as examples of relatively common situations that require planning and safety training.
Look beyond external security
The physical hardening of school land or buildings is only going so far, explains Justin Heinze, co -director of the National Center for School Safety at the University of Michigan. He urges education leaders to examine the school climate more closely more closely and the means to identify threats before transforming violence.
In the “vast and vast majority” of cases, the school shooters have warning signs before committing the attacks, says Mr. Heinze. Minneapolis police acknowledged an “alleged manifesto”, which would have published online by the Annunciation shooter, who was withdrawn by the police while the investigation continues.
“How can we educate students and staff and all those in the school community to seek these signs and report them, so that there is an intervention before it comes to a point where a weapon or other weapon is brought to the campus?” Said Mr. Heinze.
Part of this can reside in more support and awareness outside school campuses. Many schools use – and make strongly advertising – anonymous relationship systems that encourage a state of mind “to see something, say something”.
“We do not generally have it for the wider community,” explains Mr. Heinze.
Back in Minneapolis, a community assaulted by sorrow began his healing journey. During a prayer service on Wednesday evening, the spiritual leader of the Archdiocese of Saint-Paul and Minneapolis underlined the bravery and the love exposed by the children of the school as a guiding light to move forward.
“When there is this kind of love, my brothers and sisters, we can also build this house of God,” said Archbishop Bernard Hebda.
Patrik Jonsson staff editors reported to Minneapolis, Jackie Valley de Las Vegas and Sophie Hills de Washington.
