After the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting, threats of gun violence in schools began to rise. One rumor was targeted toward South Albany High School, whose campus is only about three miles away from West Albany High School. How do law enforcement and school officials react to these kinds of threats, and how do they react if these rumors of school shootings become realities?
When asked about what things are done to prevent gun violence in schools, Officer Sam Posthuma from the Albany Police Department goes on to explain that “If we get word of an active threat that hasn’t occurred yet or is rumored to occur, we are investigating it right from the very beginning.” Stating that their main goal in these kind of situations is “to stop the threat.”
Before becoming officers, members of the Albany police department learn how to respond to active threats. Even after all that, “Once a year, we go through what we call our in-service trainings. Our police officers go through active threat scenarios that Albany Police Department put on themselves.” Posthuma said.
Posthuma emphasized the importance of staff and student relationships and what measures the school should be taking in order to prevent threats toward student safety. Officer Posthuma put it, “I think relationship building is important, and again, the students need to feel comfortable with going to a teacher outside of any sort of consequence or feeling like they’re telling on someone.”
As well as expressing the importance of parents properly storing their weapons, Officer Posthuma explains how parents need to store their weapons where they are safe and un-accessible to youth or at-risk individuals in the home, phrasing it as “Not keeping it in your dresser drawer, on your nightstand, or in your closet. [Not] in your truck or in the garage.”Posthuma said, “Unsecure, that’s not the answer.”
West Albany High School staff have an especially interesting point of view when it comes to the threat of violence in the halls. Spanish Teacher Ken Bieser, said, “Every teacher in the building went through a training in the library where we had to practice applying tourniquets… and packing bullet wounds.” Bieser expanded on this, explaining how the red bags in each classroom are not just basic first aid kits but have the materials required for teachers to apply that life-saving first aid.
Bieser also went on to point out one of the causes of this violence, saying, “There’s a lot of resources out there for your physical health, but mental health is still very much taboo.” Calling attention to the lack of mental health resources accessible to Americans. There are a lot of factors that cause and complicate these situations, but as Bieser states, “It’s tough, but kids are getting killed at school… very often, so it’s something that we really need to address.”
