Utah leaders look for lessons from recent Georgia high school shooting

SALT LAKE CITY — As Utah’s School Security Task Force meeting got underway Monday at the State Capitol, chair Ryan Wilcox noted there wasn’t a lot on the agenda.

“We had the option to cancel,” said Wilcox, a Republican state lawmaker from Ogden. “But because of what’s happened, we also felt like it was super important that we have the conversation.”

What happened was a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia nearly two weeks ago that killed two students and two teachers.

Wilcox said the shooting was tragic but instructive.

“We’ve been able to learn a lot,” he said.

Specifically, Wilcox said, two things played a critical role in Georgia – a panic alarm system put in place just days earlier, and armed school resource officers who stopped the shooter.

Earlier this year, the Utah Legislature passed a law requiring panic buttons and armed guards in schools, which generated some controversy.

“The two things that we’ve taken the most heat on,” Wilcox said, “are probably the two most important and made the biggest difference in real time in a real emergency.”

But even with that, leaders said Utah isn’t doing enough yet to make schools safer and prevent shootings.

Detecting weapons at schools

Matt Pennington, Utah’s state security chief, said threats need to be tracked more closely. In Georgia, the accused shooter had been investigated a year earlier for threatening a school shooting, NBC News reported.

“If the attack happens, we’ve already missed it,” Pennington said.

Pennington also said he wants schools to detect weapons ahead of time, as students come into the building.

“We go to events all the time in this current day and age where you’re going through it, and you don’t even think twice,” Pennington said. “You don’t even really pay attention to it because the technology’s advanced to the point where it just looks different.”

Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, who also sits on the School Security Task Force, added that parents need to play a bigger role by securing their weapons.

“Locking up the guns with a trigger lock or storing it offsite are some of the simplest things we can do to prevent both suicides and school shootings,” Eliason said.

Wilcox said he’s heading to Georgia next week to visit Apalachee High School and try to learn more from what happened there to help Utah.

“At the end of the day, all any of us care about is that we prevent the unnecessary loss of life,” Wilcox said.