MEMPHIS — Parents should look in their children's bedroom for signs of potential violent behavior, the director of a seminar intended to prevent schoolyard shootings said Tuesday.
Representatives from five U.S. communities that have experienced school shootings over the past eight months met privately in an all-day meeting at a downtown Memphis hotel.
The public was barred from the event to allow those intimately involved to express feelings without being intimidated by the news media, said Bill Reisman, an Indianola, Iowa, criminologist and co-sponsor of the seminar.
"This is not a school problem," Reisman, a specialist in antisocial behavior among children, said at a news conference after the seminar. "It's a community problem."
Mayor Jimmy Foster of Pearl, Miss., was the co-organizer. Memphis was picked as the meeting site because of its central location.
Shootings at a school in Foster's town and at schools near Jonesboro, Ark.; West Paducah, Ky.; Edinboro, Pa.; and most recently, on May 21, at Springfield, Ore., have left 13 people dead and 44 injured. Six students ranging in age from 11 to 16 have been charged.
The March 24 shootings at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro left four students and a teacher dead and 10 others wounded. Two students at the school, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, are scheduled to be tried on capital murder charges in juvenile court at Jonesboro on June 17.
''We wonder how could this have happened in our midst, but we realize what happened is not just our problem. It's a problem of our whole society,'' the Rev. Fred Haustein of Jonesboro Haustein said after the seminar. ''We're trying to learn from that. We're in the process of trying to learn.''
About 60 people from the five communities attended the seminar, including city administrators, police, firefighters, school counselors, clergy and medical personnel. Jonesboro officials seen at the hotel included Mayor Hubert Brodell, Fire Chief Floyd Johnson and Nettleton school Superintendent John Sawyer.
Reisman said more than 30 topics were discussed, including communication between schools and police, developing school bus drivers as the "first line of defense," and searching students' backpacks and lockers. He said he expects to publish a report of the seminar's findings before fall. He said he will advertise the report's availability through magazines aimed at school administrators.
"When it happens five to six times, you have to take it seriously," Reisman said
Pearl Mayor Foster said the seminar was the first time he has spoken to other officials involved in similar shootings. He said he hoped to sponsor future meetings, possibly one involving the news media.
"We all have something in common," Foster said of the participants. "But they all came to learn. I think this went over real well."
A court in Hattiesburg, Miss., seated a jury Tuesday for the trial of the 17-year-old boy accused of killing two classmates and wounding seven with gunfire at the Pearl high school in October. On Friday the boy was convicted of stabbing and bludgeoning his mother to death only hours before the school attack.
The Rev. Tommy Mitchell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Pearl, said Tuesday's seminar gave him tips on how to counsel future shooting victims.
"If an unfortunate incident happens again, we can help, " Mitchell said. "We'll never be prepared, but at least we can have a game plan."
In general, the group decided that all schools, even those in small towns, should pay more attention to security and emergency plans for working with police and hospitals, Reisman said.
They also should place more emphasis on counseling students and teaching them ways to solve their problems without violence. Stronger gun-control laws may be needed to keep firearms away from youngsters, the group decided.
The meeting was an emotional one. Several in attendance said tears were shed. Another who asked not to be identified said many people lambasted the news media, saying reporters went overboard in covering the shootings.
Those in attendance were advised not to comment to the media Tuesday.
"We talked about the media," Reisman said. "Reporting was not the problem. The method of reporting is the concern to me." He said graphic pictures and overemphasis of rumors disturbed him.
"This apparently is a new phenomenon," he added. "We need to get good, accurate information."
In Jonesboro, a false rumor that Shannon Wright, the teacher killed in the Westside shootings, was pregnant was picked up by some media outlets. Soon thereafter, police called a news conference to dispel that rumor and another that incorrectly said the two suspects in the case were cousins.
But perhaps the most important emphasis in Memphis on Tuesday was how to help other communities avoid such a terrible experience.
Reisman said parents of school-age children need to watch closely their children's actions at home, going so far as to inspect their bedrooms.
"Those things on the kids' walls are what they will be," he said. Reisman said he has talked with parents who told him their children built coffins in their rooms.
"It's serious sign," he said. A future seminar for parents is a possibility, he said.
Nick Harris, a Paducah juvenile officer, said he will monitor juvenile offenders closer. "As parents ... we need to be aware of early signs that are out of the norm," he said. "There's a misconception we all have that it can't be our child. We don't expect it to happen."
"You can only know with certainty after the fact," he said.
Mayor Foster said he hoped those attending will return home and develop separate crisis plans for schools and develop communication channels between law enforcement agencies and schools.
"Each of us will go back to our community to implement what we learned," he said. "The only thing we really had in common was kids, guns and schools. Each kid was there for a different reason. We've got to be ready."
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