School Bus Terror in the US.

Mass Slaughter In Our Schools: The Terrorists' Chilling Plan?
By Chuck Remsberg
Senior PoliceOne Contributor

Part 1 of 3Probably the last place you want to think of terrorists striking is your kids' school. But according to two trainers at an anti-terrorism conference on the East Coast, preparations for attacks on American schools that will bring rivers of blood and staggering body counts are well underway in Islamic terrorist camps.

• The intended attackers have bluntly warned us they're going to do it.
• They're already begun testing school-related targets here.They've given us a catastrophic model to train against, which we've largely ignored and they've learned more deadly tactics from.

"We don't know for sure what they will do. No one knows the future. But by definition, a successful attack is one we are not ready for," declared one of the instructors, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. Our schools fit that description to a "T"-as in Terrorism and Threat.

Grossman, the popular law enforcement motivational speaker, and Todd Rassa, a trainer with the SigArms Academy and an advisory board member for The Police Marksman magazine, shared a full day's agenda on the danger to U.S. schools at a recent three-day conference on terrorist issues, sponsored by the International Assn. of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI) in Atlantic City.


They reminded the audience that patrol officers, including perhaps some with their own children involved, will inevitably be the first responders when terrorists hit. And they documented chilling descriptions of the life-or-death challenges that likely will be faced.


In Part 1 of this three-part report on highlights of their presentations we focus on what's known about the threat to our schools to date, why terrorists have selected them as targets, and what tactics you're likely to be up against in responding to a sudden strike.


In Parts 2 and 3, we'll explore Grossman's and Rassa's recommendations for practical measures you and your agency can take now to get ready, including some defensive actions that don't require any budget allocations.


Why schools? Two reasons:
1. Our values. "The most sacred thing to us is our children, our babies," Rassa said. Killing hundreds of them at a time would significantly "boost Islamic morale and lower that of the enemy" (us). In Grossman's words, terrorists see this effort as "an attempt to defile our nation" by leaving it "stunned to its soul."

2. Our lack of preparation. Police agencies "aren't used to this," Rassa said. "We deal with acts of a criminal nature. This is an act of war," but because of our laws "we can't depend on the military to help us," at least at the outset.


Indeed, Grossman claimed, "the U.S. in the one nation in the world where the military is not the first line of defense against domestic terrorist attacks. By law, you the police officer are our Delta Force. It is your job to go in, while in most other nations cops will wait for the military to come save their kids."


School personnel, Rassa said, "are not even close" to being either mentally or physically prepared. "Most don't even have response plans for handling a single active shooter. Their world is taught to nurture and care for people. They don't want to deal with this."


The American public, "sticking their heads in the sand, can't be mentally prepared," he said. "They're going to freak when it happens," their stubborn denial making the crisis "all the more shocking."


Noting that "sheep have two speeds: 'graze' and 'stampede,'" Grossman predicted that "not a parent in the nation will send their kids to school the next day"-perhaps for many days-after a large-scale terrorist massacre. If day-care centers-"also on the terrorists' list"-are hit as well, "parents will drop out of the work force" en masse to protect their children and "our economy will be devastated."

How we know they're coming.
Al-Qaeda has publicly asserted the "right" to kill 2,000,000 American children, Rassa explained, and has warned that "operations are in stages of preparation" now. He played vivid videotapes confiscated in Afghanistan, showing al-Qaeda terrorists practicing the takeover of a school. The trainees issue commands in English, rehearse separating youngsters into manageable groups and meeting any resistance with violence. Some "hostages" are taken to the rooftop, dangled over the edge, then "shot."


"Any place that has given [Islamic terrorists] trouble, they've come after the kids," Grossman said. Muslim religious literature, according to Rassa, states clearly that the killing of children not only is "permitted" in Islam but is "approved" by Mohammed, so long as the perpetrators "are striving for the general good" as interpreted by that religion.


He cited instances in Indonesia where girls on their way to school have been beheaded and in other countries where children have been shot, mutilated, raped or burned alive.


In this country this year ['06], Rassa said, there have been several school bus-related incidents involving Middle Eastern males that raise suspicion of terrorist activity. These include the surprise boarding of a school bus in Florida by two men in trench coats, who may have been on a canvassing mission, and the attempt in New York State by an Arab male to obtain a job as a school bus driver using fraudulent Social Security documents. The latter gave an address in Detroit, home to a large colony of fundamentalist Muslims.


Rassa claimed that floor plans for half a dozen schools in Virginia, Texas and New Jersey have been recovered from terrorist hands in Iraq.


The terrorists' tactical model.
A "dress rehearsal for what terrorists plan to do to us" has already taken place, Rassa and Grossman agreed. That was the brutal takedown in 2004 of a school that served children from 6 to 17 years old in Beslan, Russia.
Some 100 terrorists were involved, nearly half of whom were discreetly embedded in the large crowd of parents, staff and kids who showed up for the first day of school; the rest arrived for the surprise attack in SUVs, troop carriers and big sedans. Across a three-day siege, 700 people were wounded and 338 killed, including 172 youngsters.


If a similar assault were launched against a school in your jurisdiction, how would you and your agency respond? Consider this modest sampling of challenges that were deliberately planned or arose from the ensuing chaos at Beslan, as outlined by Rassa:

• The school was chosen because it was one of the taller buildings in the area and had a very complicated floor plan, making a rapid and effective counter-assault by responders extremely difficult. Offender weaponry included AK-47s, sniper rifles, RPGs and explosives, with everything the terrorists needed carried in on their backs. RPGs were fired at a responding military helicopter and at troops.
  
  
• More than 1,000 men, women and children, including babies, were penned in an unventilated gym and a cafeteria. As the days passed without food or water and inside temperatures rose to 115 degrees, survivors were eating flowers they'd brought for teachers and fighting for urine to drink out of their shoes in desperation. Women and some children were repeatedly and continuously raped.
• 
  * Adult males and larger male students were used as "forced labor" to help fortify the building, then shot to death. Bodies were thrown out of an upper-story window, down onto a courtyard. Attempts at negotiation by responders were used by the terrorists strictly as an opportunity to buy time to solidify their fortifications.
  
  
• Surviving hostages were surrounded by armed guards standing on deadman switches, wired to explosives. All entrances to the building as well as stairwells and some interior doorways were booby-trapped. Youngsters were forced to sit on window sills to serve as shields for snipers. "Black widows" (potential suicide bombers) were rigged so their bomb belts could be detonated by remote control when leaders considered the timing was right. The terrorists stayed cranked up on some type of amphetamine to keep awake.
  
  
• Armed, outraged parents and other civilians, some of them drunk, showed up and started "rolling gunfights" outside in a futile effort to defeat the takeover. The crowd identified one embedded terrorist and "literally ripped him apart." The media was everywhere, unrestrained. So many people were milling around that responders often could not establish a clear field of fire.
  
  
• When troops finally stormed the school in a counter-assault on the third day, "pure pandemonium" reigned. Soldiers and the kids they were trying to rescue were gunned down mercilessly. Explosions touched off inside started multiple fires.
  
  
• Responders who made it inside had to jump over trip wires as they "ran" up stairs under fire from above. By then terrorists were holding hostages in virtually every room. Rescue teams were subjected to continual ambushes. Gunfights occurred predominately within a 6-ft. range, with some responders having to fight for their lives in places so cramped they couldn't get off their hands and knees.
  
  
• Some children successfully rescued from the building were so crazed by thirst that they ran to an outdoor spigot and were killed by a grenade as they filled their hands with water.
  
  
• Terrorists who escaped during the melee ran to homes of embedded sympathizers who hid them successfully and were not immediately suspected because they were considered "non-strangers" in the community. Some townspeople who volunteered to help as stretcher bearers for the injured were, in fact, embedded terrorists.
  
  
• During the siege "at least four people or agencies claimed to be in charge. Actually, no one was in charge and no one wanted to be."

"Osama bin Laden has promised that what has happened in Russia will happen to us many times over," Grossman warned. "And Osama tries very hard never to lie to us."

What's likely here.
Probably not so many terrorists involved at a single location. Moving that big a contingent into place would likely attract too much attention and thwart the attack. Grossman describes a more likely possibility, in his opinion:


Terrorist cells of four operatives each might strike simultaneously at four different schools. They may pick elementary schools, or middle schools with no police officers on site, where the girls are "old enough to rape" but students are not big enough to fight back effectively.


The targets may be in states "with no concealed-carry laws and no hunting culture" and in communities where "police do not have rifles." Rural areas could be favored, where 30 minutes or more might be required for responders to arrive in force.


The attackers will probably "mow down every kid and teacher they see" as they move in to seize the school. They may plant bombs throughout the buildings, and "rape, murder and throw out bodies like they did in Russia." Emergency vehicles responding and children fleeing will be blown up by car bombs in the parking lot.


In all, 100 to 300 children could be slaughtered in a first strike.
Terrorists capable of this are already embedded in communities "all over America," Grossman and Rassa agreed. More will probably gain entry surreptitiously from Mexico, making southern California potentially a prime target.


No time for despair.
It's a grim picture, for certain. "But if we think there's nothing we can do to prepare, that is a defeatist mentality," Rassa said. "We ought to be trying. If we're not trying, we're failing. We may as well give up our guns and surrender now.


"I can't think of a better thing to train up for than protecting our kids. If we try but fall short, look at how much else we'll still be able to handle than we can now.


"What made most of us do active-shooter training? The killings at Columbine. Are we going to wait for something far worse than that before we do the most that we can to stop the terrorists who are coming for our schools?"



Part 2 of 3
"4 Ds" For Thwarting Terrorists' Plans To Massacre Our School Children

[Editor's Note: In Part 1, we documented the plans of Islamic terrorists to strike U.S. schools in murderous raids, claiming the lives of hundreds of children, as reported at a recent anti-terrorism conference, sponsored by the International Assn. of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI). In Part 2, we summarize countermeasures proposed by one of the conference instructors, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of the popular books On Killing and On Combat.]

As Instructor Todd Rassa pointed out in our first installment, if we are not trying to prepare for and thwart the daunting terrorist threat to our schools and children, we are, in effect, conceding defeat and surrendering without a battle to those who would obliterate us.


There is no simple master plan for an easy victory. But the cumulative effect of many seemingly small countermeasures, effectively applied on a large scale by individual officers and their agencies, can have a powerful impact.


Here are some of the practicalities that Trainer Dave Grossman suggested we consider in beginning to address the critical problem of terrorists coming for our kids.


First mission.
That's overcoming denial. And where schools and terrorist attacks are concerned, denial abounds.

U.S. schools continue to take extensive and overt measures to guard students against the threat of fire, with drills, alarms, sprinkler systems, building codes, etc.-even though there has not been a single child killed by fire in any American school in the last 25 years, Grossman declared.


In contrast, well over 200 deaths have occurred from school violence by active shooters and other non-terrorist offenders over the last dozen years, and Islamic fundamentalists are believed to be plotting attacks that will claim hundreds of child casualties in a single blow. Yet efforts to significantly harden schools as a target of violence have, for the most part, been slow, timid or nonexistent.


"We need to treat the threat of violence like the threat of fire. But if you try to prepare for violence, people think you're crazy, paranoid," Grossman said.


"Denial is the enemy. It's a big, fluffy white blanket we pull up over our eyes to convince ourselves the bad men are never going to come. And while we pull that blanket up, bad guys come and kick us in the crotch.


"Let's face the lessons terrorists have already taught us in blood and lives. They are coming, and they may well come for our schools, our kids. We've had all the warning in the world. And if we continue living in denial, then all the lives they've claimed to date have been sacrificed for nothing."


Grossman's 4 Ds.
Besides working to eliminate the big D (denial), Grossman cited four others we need to focus on:


1. Deter
An armed police presence in a school can provide strong deterrence against attack, Grossman argued. "Terrorists are willing to die, but they desperately don't want to die for nothing, without completing their tactical objective. They want a body count."


To squelch would-be attackers, many Israeli schools deploy on-site police at squad-level strength, and armed guards accompany all class fieldtrips, usually one per 10 students. But even with a single armed officer in a school, "the prospects of a massacre go way down," Grossman said.
Having unarmed security in or around schools is both pointless and ethically derelict, in his opinion. "Don't give someone responsibility for human lives and not give them the tools to do the job. You wouldn't give a firefighter just a hat, uniform and badge, and no hose or water."


Should teachers be armed? At least two states (Utah and New Hampshire) now authorize concealed-carry permits in schools, according to Grossman, and the Federal Safe Schools Act allows for it. Faculty with military experience and a willingness to receive additional training could be a starting point.


"Even one or two armed teachers in a school can make a difference," Grossman said. But given the current American mind-set, "you have to push this envelope very gently."


2. Detect
"The ultimate achievement is a terrorist takeover that doesn't start," Grossman said. And officers being suspicious-"doing what cops do"-are well positioned to interrupt attack plans before they culminate.


Follow good criminal patrol procedures on traffic stops, for instance, by asking probing questions and being alert for contradictions, inconsistencies, irrationalities, unduly nervous behavior and other indicators of deceit and guilty behavior. Be aware of what you can see inside vehicles or on subjects that may merit closer investigation.


Watch for signs of static or mobile surveillance of potential targets. Terrorists "always conduct a recon," which may involve photographing or videotaping a prospective site, Grossman said. Don't limit your suspicions just to persons who fit the stereotypical terrorist profile. "There are terrorists who are blond and blue eyed."


Inform schools to report any calls from people inquiring about security. Someone claiming to be a concerned parent wanting to know if any armed officers are on the premises may in fact be an operative gauging the vulnerability of the location. The staffer taking the call should jot down the caller ID number and note the precise time and the phone line the call came in on to facilitate follow up checking by police. "Any time terrorists bounce off a hard target is a chance to catch them."


3. Delay
If terrorists do strike, "one man or woman with effective fire from behind cover inside the school can hold off a group of attackers for 5 minutes," saving lives by buying time until police responders "can get in the door," Grossman claimed.


Meantime, at the first hint of trouble, teachers and children should kick in to a preplanned and frequently rehearsed three-step "lock-down model," he recommended. "Sheltering" children in place, as has been attempted in various school shootings, is more likely to be dangerous than protective. Instead, Grossman advises potential victims to:

• Move away from violence, which otherwise tends to be "mesmerizing and paralyzing"
• Move to a pre-selected secure location, someplace "secure enough to keep the bad guys out until the cops come in"
• Move again if you have reason to feel threatened at that spot. "Lock-down does not mean hunker down and die," Grossman said.

"As a last resort," there may be times when a teacher would need the courage to "go toward an attacker." Grossman cited a case in which an active shooter broke a window in a classroom door and reached through to release the locked knob. Teacher and students cowered inside and just waited, whereas a teacher might have "grabbed a chair and attacked his hand" and possibly have delayed or deterred a fatal assault.


Plans on paper "mean nothing," Grossman reminded. "You have to get the schools to rehearse" anti-terrorist scenarios. "Principals have been fired for not doing fire drills," and yet the terrorist threat these days is so much greater. Where are our priorities?


4. Destroy
As a responding officer, you have to be fully prepared, mentally and physically, to use deadly force to stop the threat. "It is your job to put a chunk of steel in your fist and kill the sons-of-bitches who are coming to kill your kids," Grossman declared in an emotional crescendo in his presentation.
"Fight from the very beginning. Don't wait, thinking you'll fight later."


Referring to the terrorist massacre at the school in Beslan, Russia, which we described in Part 1 of this series, Grossman said: "Every minute the Russians waited, the target got harder." If you hesitate in responding, "you'll die with a bullet in the back of your head in front of children."


Part 3 of 3
How To Prepare Yourself For Terrorist Attacks On Our Schools
[Editor's note: In previous installments, we documented the plans of Islamic terrorists to murder hundreds of U.S. school children, as reported at a recent anti-terrorism conference sponsored by the International Assn. of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI), and we summarized counter measures proposed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.

In this final report, we explore recommendations of another conference speaker, Todd Rassa, a trainer with the SigArms Academy and a member of the advisory board for The Police Marksman magazine. We conclude with Grossman's suggestions of what LE agencies can do to defend our schools despite current budget restraints.]

Trainer Todd Rassa considers active-shooter training, which is now being embraced by more and more departments, as "a good start," but he warned that much more is needed to adequately protect our children from terrorist attacks on schools.

Here are some of the items he enumerated for a conscientious "to do" list:

Rassa's recommendations.
1. Train every patrol officer in bomb awareness, crowd management, riot control, ballistic shield tactics, team firing drills and other response skills likely to be needed for a mass school takedown. Responsibility for an immediate effective response will most probably fall heavily on street cops, given the activation time for most SWAT teams.


2. Proper equipment needs to be readied. "Patrol rifles are needed now-as many as possible with as much ammunition as possible," Rassa stressed. Also ballistic shields, helmets and other protective devices for every officer. Have a plan in place to get large amounts of additional ammo to the scene ASAP.


Soft body armor may prove inadequate, but extras should be available anyway in a better-than-nothing effort to protect fleeing hostages by draping vests and ballistic blankets over them. Armored transport vehicles may prove crucial. Less-lethal rounds may be useful for crowd control, but will be futile to attempt against terrorists.


3. Work with school officials to anticipate problems and realistically rewrite their emergency plans. "They are not going to fix themselves," Rassa predicted. Cross-train with school personnel and consider involving community leaders with training on crowd-control tactics and intel collection. Manpower and tactics will be needed to handle "outraged, violent parents" if a siege develops.


SROs, who likely will be targeted by terrorists as first casualties, need training on "surveillance awareness, including real-life testing of school security" by would-be invaders.


4. Expand your active-shooter training to include "large, complicated, multi-adversary scenarios and exercises," Rassa urged. Practice against a booby-trapped environment, simultaneous attacks from multiple levels, ambushes from the rear. Rehearse tactics for CQB with both pistol and rifle.
Also practice counter-assaults on school buses. "What if terrorists hijacked a couple of buses and drove them into a school? What if they hijacked several and spread them out across your town?"


5. Incorporate suicide-bomber shooting drills into your firearms training for every officer. That should include "practicing head shots from a distance with a pistol after running." Build the ability to shoot while moving into your qualifications. Also integrate self-defense DT into firearms training-"blending two important worlds that usually never meet." Even consider training with AK-47s and other "exotic" weapons that may be in your property room, on the chance you may have to use the weapons of neutralized terrorists if yours run empty.


6. Thoroughly familiarize yourself with your schools. Videotape them inside and out and collect and review floor plans, making sure they are kept up to date as remodeling projects take place. Work with schools to get classroom numbers put on street signs and mounted on the exterior. Also check to see if computers in your squad cars can be made compatible with CCTV cameras inside the building, so you can tie in to what's going inside in event of trouble.


7. As a parent, you may want to falsify your occupation (as a police office) on school records so your child will not be easily identified as a desirable hostage.


8. And, of course, stage frequent incident-command training and exercises, so multiple jurisdictions and multiple disciplines (fire, police, EMS, city services, etc.) learn the importance of putting political egos and turf wars aside in the interest of saving children's lives.


Agency actions that don't take $$$
Dave Grossman, the well-known author of On Killing and On Combat, concluded IALEFI's excellent conference with suggestions of how LE agencies can improve their protection of schools without further straining already tight budgets.


1. Encourage officers always to carry off-duty. Always.
No one can predict where a given officer might be when terrorists strike. What if you were off-duty on a visit to your child's school; would you have the primary life-saving tool of your profession with you? Remember, Grossman said, "One person behind cover with effective fire can hold down a whole company of invaders for 5 minutes" while help arrives.
" If we stop them dead in one school and kill them before they kill kids, that will convince the country that we can fight back. If they fail in one school, that will undermine their plan.


" If you walk out off-duty without your gun, every time you pass a fire exit or see a fire extinguisher, say to yourself, 'Firefighters have made more preparations than I have.' Plant the seed with other officers. Once you tell them, they can't not think about it."


2. Exploit opportunities to expand your equipment inventory.

• Many cash-strapped agencies now encourage officers to buy and carry their own rifles on duty. If certain standards and training are maintained, that's a quick way to strengthen your counter-force.
  
  
• Officers should also be encouraged to prepare and ride with "go bags" that can be slung over their shoulder as they head into a crisis. Loaded with backup boxes of pistol and rifle ammo, these can be comforting safeguards against running dry in a firefight, where "three magazines can easily be burned up in less than a minute."
  
  
• Get the name and phone number of every private owner of a helicopter in your area and coordinate with them ahead of time a plan for pressing their chopper into service in an emergency. Even news agencies might be willing to cooperate if promised "great footage" in exchange for transporting officers to a siege site. As medivac helicopters go in, they should come in full of armed police, and go out full of wounded.
  " There will be gridlock chaos on the ground within moments wherever an attack comes," Grossman said. "Helicopters can be great for getting firepower in and wounded out." Practice hovering over schools and landing personnel on the flat roofs that most have.
  
  
• Envision fire hoses as "crew-served weapons." At a terrorist scene, hoses can be used not only "to put out fires that may be caused by booby traps" but can also "knock a combatant out of a window 50 yards away-an incredibly effective weapon."
  A firefighter directing the hose can be protected behind two officers holding ballistic shields and two officers behind the shields with rifles, Grossman suggested. Obviously, this tactic requires practice well before it's needed.

3. Build the right mind-set in your troops.
As a police officer, "you have to have your heart and mind ready," Grossman said. "In our nation, the military is not coming to save your kids. You are the Delta Force. It's your job to go in like thunder when they come to kill your kids and destroy your way of life.

" Get training-all you can. Advance steadily along the warrior path. Live life in Condition Yellow, vigilant readiness. Cultivate hobbies that reinforce your survival skills."

He conjured a bumper sticker that says, Piss on golf. Real Americans go to the range. "We don't have time for childish pursuits," he declared.

" Most people in our society are sheep. Wolves will feed on them without hesitation. Anyone who thinks there are no wolves is in denial.

" You are the sheepdog, the protector. When bad stuff comes, the sheepdog is prepared, even eager. If you are not ready, who is?"

************************************************** ***************
About Charles Remsberg
Chuck co-founded the original Street Survival Seminar and the Street Survival Newsline, authored three of the best-selling law enforcement training textbooks, and helped produce numerous award-winning training videos. His nearly three decades of work earned him the prestigious O.W. Wilson Award for outstanding contributions to law enforcement and the American Police Hall of Fame Honor Award for distinguished achievement in public service.

The above is in reponse to this post on FR:

Glenn Beck: Terror Threat to school buses and schools?

Glenn Beck ^ | 09/10/07


Posted on 09/10/2007 10:02:18 AM MDT by Recovering_Democrat


A short vanity here; hopefully someone can FILL me in! I just caught the end of Glenn Beck's show today (9/10/07)and he had some woman on whose hubby is a director of a middle size school district in the midwest.
Supposedly schools have been put 'on alert' that there is a threat (is it credible?) to busses and schools and they've been given guidelines as to what to look for.


Beck made it SOUND like it was possibly imminent, not just a routine "be aware that this could happen..." kind of thing.


Anyone have specifics? Or is Glenn just emphasizing this because we're on the brink of the 9/11 anniversary?


Wish I could provide more info, but like I said, I just caught the end of the show...RD

(No, I am not the RD in the above article)

This happened, and no one did anything:

May 21, 2006

Two Saudi men board school bus in Tampa, are arrested: a case of the wrong bus, or something more serious?

UPDATE: Greetings, Kos readers! I have a message for you here.
I think it's plausible that someone who doesn't know America very well might mistake a school bus for a public bus. But why was one of them wearing a trench coat, in May, in Tampa, Florida? Why did they keep changing their story about why they wanted to go to the school? And why did they originally say they were from Morocco instead of admitting they were Saudis? And why has their bail been revoked (which detail comes from the Rottweiler, not the Trib story) if this were just a case of boarding the wrong bus?


"Saudi Men Who Rode School Bus Arrested," from the Tampa Tribune, with thanks to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, who suspects this was a test run for Beslan-in-America:

TAMPA - Two Saudi men were arrested Friday after they boarded a school bus and rode to Wharton High School in New Tampa.

Students on the bus became alarmed, as did the bus driver, who called ahead. Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies met the bus at the school and detained the men. No one was injured and nothing out of line occurred on the bus, deputies said.


Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, who lives in Apt. 302 in The Point apartments, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20 Monticello Gardens, Apt. 304-A, each were charged with trespassing on school property. Both remained in Orient Road Jail on Friday evening. Bail for each was set at $250.


"Both defendants gave several versions of the reason they took a school bus to a high school," said Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway.


"They said they wanted to go to Wharton to look around, and then they said they wanted to go there to have some fun, and then they said they wanted to enroll in the English classes there," Callaway said.


"We're not sure if this was a situation of them just being new to this country, or if they were confused or what it was," Callaway said. "We were unsure as to exactly what the final reason was, but it did cause great concern for the students on the bus and for us. One of the guys was wearing shorts with a black trench coat."


While on the bus, the men laughed and spoke in Arabic, Callaway said.


Ahmed Bedier, Tampa director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the men likely meant no harm and that because "they were from Saudi Arabia, that escalated the situation."


He blamed the incident on cultural differences.
"They didn't differentiate between a school bus and public transportation," he said.


The bus picked up the students and the men at about 7 a.m. Friday at the corner of Fletcher Avenue and 42nd Street, deputies said.


The bus driver, a substitute, reached her supervisors by telephone. They relayed the information to Wharton High resource Deputy Mike Eastman, who met the bus when it arrived at school at about 7:30 a.m., and detained the men.
The sheriff's Homeland Security Division, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Regional Domestic Security Task Force, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI all were notified.


Almanajam and Alsidran at first told deputies they were from Morocco, but later admitted being from Saudi Arabia, deputies said. They said they were enrolled at the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida.


Both arrived in the United States about six months ago and have student visas that require them to be enrolled at the English Language Institute, Callaway said.


Authorities searched the apartments of the two men and found nothing of concern, he said.

Sadly I believe this to be a very possible scenerio. Given the lack of security in past years, it would appear very plausible for this type of attack.

I also would be very observent when attending large gatherings, such as sporting events, or even shopping malls.

Sometimes ole Glenn Beck makes sense to me,


Hopefully school administrators will be on the lookout for this type of thing, but unfortunatly it usually costs lives before anything is actually done in the line of prevention.

I for one would have no problem with authorty figures in schools being armed.

Good articles Rick!

I think this isnt just possible, but PROBABLE. heres why i think that: look its simple, number one how many KIDS went on unstoppable rampages with petty firearms killing so many because not ONE PERSON in their school was able to fight back? guys, we gotta change that. just one person with a gun.....

Second, think about it. theres nobody there. even if you have one armed guard or teacher, thats gonna buy some time but the person with the pistol or rifle needs training. good solid realistic training. this isnt a paintball game.
Third, these guys know that attacking a military base is macho for them, but theyd all much rather hit a soft target and cause way greater casualties. what kind of casualties? the kind that REALLY get news: kids. Beslan made news and scared people in a bigger way than Madrid or London did. and guess what? its easier. kids cant fight back, and the teachers probably wont fight back.

We have to get people inside our schools who already are sheepdogs, not attempt to make dogs out of sheep. retired cops, who are looking for a way to do something and do some good. ex military who work in the school taking advantage of concealed carry laws. those are the people we need there. its doubtful a teacher with a .38 special will do a lot of good.

And yeah other than that, he gets everything right. problem is, a lot of the departments that are small town just dont have the ability or equipment to practice say, boarding a school bus to train for doing it under fire with live hostages. that may be called for, but a local dept with 4 cops and two cars, and four rifles just is not capable of doing that. best they can do is try to slow the attack down and wait for the cavalry to arrive.

i think he's dead on about the preventative measures. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. that small town department i mentioned did in fact, do what he recommended in buying their own AR 15s and the cars each have a dept issue one too. so you do what you can, but we just are not capable of dealing with this.not small scale or the beslan style scorched earth attack.

Point blank, Seal Team Six or CAG (1st SFOD-D) has standing orders, backed up by a presidential finding, that if something like this happens, soon as local, and then state asks for help, they can deploy. Posse comitatus is suspended. now, will they? and will they get there in time to make a 'hasty assault', or an 'emergency action assault'? i dunno. i know they are designed to respond hella fast to anywhere they are needed, but that doesnt take into account other things they need to be effective when they drop the hammer.

we can get delta there, we can get Six there. problem is, will it already be over and done with by that time?

Another problem we have is this: even the departments with a big time SERT or SWAT team may not effectively tackle this even if they have the gear and training. point blank, look at Virginia Tech. Now this is controversial, but its been thrown out there that the SERT teams were overwhelmed, and when they found out what building the shooter was in, the building didnt get cleared til after the shooting from inside stopped, and cho seung hui was dead. now, IF and thats a BIG if, thats true then we have cops who are thinking about officer safety instead of child safety.

Grossman is right. every one of those officers lives is forfiet and is a trading peice for much younger lives. its that simple: we are trading officers for children, and doing it in a shooting match. they are gonna have stack up and assault into a fortress where they have little cover, the terrorists have all the good feilds of fire, booby traps, hostages in the way, and maybe a lot less ammo then they need. They have to understand that if this happens, they are gonna lose people, and accept that before punching in at the beginning of day, even before the attack happens. its the reality of the job. you have to know that in that situation you dont have much life expectancy, unless you win, and win fast.

Active shooter is one thing. we cant timely respond to even one of those, and now we are faced with a terrorist take over of a school? guys, the whole way we do biz has to change.

Hostage negotiation is crucial in some cases but lets face it: every single shooter at a school has been totally and completely blind and deaf to any effort to negotiate. they arent interested. they only want to kill. a negotiator works AGAINST the saving of lives in the case of active shooter or Terrorist Takeover. it buys time for the bad guys to do their work and fortify. we need to stop assuming its a negotiate first, shoot later situation.

WE NEED some kind of early warning alerting us to what kind of situation it is before responders get there. we need to know, is this a conventional stand off, an active shooter, or terrorist take over? if we know, we can get a hasty assault option going based on contingency planning. if we dont know we cant even BEGIN to assault while not knowing if its a standoff or take over. The LEO on scene will be forced to go into siege mode, giving free reign to the terrorists.

some other points of interest: Cops on scene, riot gear maybe? a patrol rifle maybe? maybe a cache at the school that only LEO can access, designed to arm and aid defenders, or a counter attacking force??????

just my thoughts on this. been pondering this stark reality for a long long time, and these are a few of the ideas a couple friends and i came up with.

ev

Similar thread on Free Republic http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1895403/posts

they would like reports from all over the US on what your school is doing to prepare for these types of attacks.

http://www.glennbeck.com/news/09102007a.shtml

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/glenn.beck/