WHEREAS, acts of school violence continue to represent a vexing challenge, with tragic and devastating results1 and

WHEREAS, research conducted by the Secret Service in 2004 and currently being conducted by the Police Foundation, with funding from the United States Department of Justice, has concluded that school violence can be averted through building relationships of trust and open communication within the student body;2 and

WHEREAS, that research has also found that students who commit school violence often have unaddressed mental health or personal challenges;3 and

WHEREAS, the Police Foundation’s Averted School Violence Database project collects, analyzes and publishes incidents of averted and completed acts of school violence and provides a resource for law enforcement, schools, mental health professionals and others involved in preventing school violence by sharing ways in which other school attacks have been identified and prevented;4 and

WHEREAS, the IACP is committed to building effective and strong partnerships with educational institutions and community service providers to avert school violence wherever possible. Now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), encourages all law enforcement agencies to report information to the Averted School Violence database so that such research-based approaches can be effectively utilized to prevent further violent acts.

Submitted by: Juvenile Justice & Child Protection Committee

Co-Sponsored by: Crime Prevention Committee and Private Sector Liaison Section

JJCP.11.19

1 National Center for Education Statistics, “School Crime,” https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49.

2 Bryan Vossekuil et al., The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States (Washington, DC: United States Secret Service and the United States Department of Education, July 2004), 42, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED515942.pdf.

3 Peter Langman and Frank Straub, A Comparison of Averted and Completed School Attacks from the Police Foundation Averted School Violence Database (Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2019), 18.

4 Langman and Frank Straub, A Comparison of Averted and Completed School Attacks (February 2019), 23; National Police Foundation, “Averted School Attacks Data Collection Platform,” https://www.policefoundation.org/projects/averted-school-attacks-data-collection-   platform/.