JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In Georgia, a 14-year-old has been charged with four counts of murder after a fatal shooting at his high school. Last year he was interviewed by authorities over online threats to commit a school shooting. Authorities ended that inquiry because there wasn't clear evidence linking him to those posts.
This has raised a spotlight on how authorities investigate online threats to schools, which is an issue Pinellas County, Fla., Sheriff Bob Gualtieri knows all too well. In the wake of the Parkland school shooting in 2018, he was appointed to lead a statewide commission to make recommendations to improve safety in Florida schools. And earlier this year, he helped implement a system to track threat records at schools across the state of Florida. Sheriff Gualtieri joins me now to talk about it. Welcome to the program.
BOB GUALTIERI: Good to be with you.
SUMMERS: When a school shooting happens like the one last week in the state of Georgia, tell me, what goes through your mind?
GUALTIERI: Here we go again. The question is not whether it happens again. The question is when and where. But most importantly, the question we ask is, what are we doing differently to drive prevention, which is what we all want. So it's the same thought every time.
SUMMERS: When authorities receive tips about threats to schools being posted online - understanding that every situation is, of course, different - how do you go about determining who made those posts and whether those threats are credible or not?
GUALTIERI: The process of trying to find out who it was and what they did is usually going out and talking to people and doing interviews. But what this comes down to is - I've been doing this for a very long time, and I can tell you that the law enforcement's traditional model and traditional mindset is, do I have probable cause to make an arrest? If I have investigated it thoroughly, and I don't have cause to take action, well, then we move on, and we wait again until we get another call. And we go back out, and we repeat the cycle over and over again.
This is where the mindset has to change, and we have to view these differently. And just because there's not cause to take enforcement action doesn't mean our job is done. And actually, I'd suggest that's where the job begins. And the goal should be is you never get cause to take enforcement action because if you identify the concerning behaviors - and concerning behaviors are not necessarily prohibited behaviors. Concerning behaviors are deviation from baseline behavior because somebody has a grievance, because they're ticked off about something. They don't have the right coping mechanisms, and they're acting out - that's where we need to intervene. And quite frankly, that's not where we're intervening enough to prevent these things from moving down what's called the pathway to violence.
SUMMERS: If you can make one recommendation, you could pick one thing for law enforcement officials like yourself to do across the board to make a dent in the unfortunate and tragic number of shootings like these that we see every year, what would you suggest?
GUALTIERI: Hit the reset on what we're doing and refocus it. Let's back it out. Let's look at why people get upset about things, why they don't have the right coping mechanisms, what leads them down that path, and let's get them off that pathway.
SUMMERS: Sheriff, as I mentioned earlier, you have been working on a new threat tracking system in Florida schools. Can you just briefly explain to us how it works and how it might be able to help improve school safety there in your state?
GUALTIERI: So there are about 4,000 public schools in the state of Florida. We went through and trained about 30,000 people in the schools across the state of Florida. There's an intake process, a very formal evaluation process, and importantly, trying to identify these kids when they exhibit concerning behavior and then to put them on what we call an SSMP, which is a student support monitoring plan, which provides intervention services to balance out those concerning behaviors. And we try and get the kids to the best possible place. But there's a lot of review and a lot of accountability. But importantly, it is macro, and it is looking to identify these concerning behaviors before they manifest into a problem.
SUMMERS: We've been talking with Pinellas County, Fla., Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. Thank you so much for your time.
GUALTIERI: You're welcome. Take care.
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