Easy to conceal, harder to detect: Knives more prevalent than guns in schools

The fatal stabbing at Southeast Raleigh High School on Monday is spotlighting a security problem that's an even bigger issue than guns on campus: Knives and other non-firearm weapons.

Students are reported for possession of non-firearm weapons about 20 times as often as they are for firearms, although the weapons are rarely used in crimes at schools, according to North Carolina Department of Public Instruction data.

Knives in particular tend to be easier to conceal than many firearms. Wake County Schools doesn’t use weapons detectors or metal detectors, and it’s unclear how effective they’d be anyway. Detectors have difficulty picking up some knives.

On Tuesday, one day after 15-year-old freshman Delvin Ferrell was stabbed in a gymnasium as other students watched and took videos, Wake Schools officials vowed to improve school safety and review safety processes and protocols.

Raleigh police have obtained a secure custody order for the 14-year-old charged with Ferrell's murder. Police said the stabbing happened during a fight involving several students.

Schools are still relatively safe places. Just 3% of youth homicides take place at schools, according to the National Institute of Justice. Few students nationally fear being attacked or harmed at school, federal data shows. And most North Carolina teachers describe their schools as safe, according to 2022 state data. However, incidents like the deadly stabbing at Southeast Raleigh, , the 2022 deadly stabbing in Jacksonville and 2021 deadly shooting in Winston-Salem raise fears among parents.

Nonetheless, the likelihood of a student encountering a weapon is low.

In the Wake County Public School System, five students were reported for an assault using a weapon at school during the 2021-22 school year, while 442 students were reported for bringing weapons to school — less than one-half of a percent of the county’s 159,000 students. Eight students were reported for bringing a firearm to campus.

Other nearby school systems reported similar rates of weapon possession.

"Every parent in this district puts their trust in us when they send their child to school," Wake Superintendent Robert Taylor and Wake County Board of Education Chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in a joint statement on Monday. "All acts of violence in our schools are unacceptable."

Experts recommend a combination of safety measures to reduce and prevent violence in schools, including physical measures, such as more secure buildings, and non-physical security measures, such as anti-bullying and conflict resolution efforts.

But schools grappling with limited financial resources often have to make tough choices to deter and prevent violence on school grounds.

Detecting weapons

Whenever a high-profile assault with a weapon occurs at a school, parents often ask about implementing metal detectors.

Metal detectors — along with requiring students’ and visitors’ use of clear bags — have become a common feature at sporting events, where patrons stand in long lines before taking their few belongings through scanners staffed by teams of employees whose only job is to run the security system.

But implementing the machines and a scanning process on a daily basis can be difficult at most schools. Schools often don’t have dedicated security staff beyond a single school resource officer. So lines could grow long, leading to missed classes and possibly requiring earlier buses and carpool times.

Students also carry large backpacks containing approved items that would set off metal detectors, such as calculators, three-ring binders or the laptops.

Artificial intelligence-powered machines are being developed to better detect weapons. But they can also have false alarms or fail to detect some knives.

And students can find ways into schools without going through the metal detectors at all, according to Hsing-Fang Hseih, a research assistant professor and the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention at the University of Michigan.

"There is very little empirical evidence for how metal detectors might work," Hseih told WRAL News earlier this year.

For metal detectors to be somewhat effective, school systems would have to splurge on expensive machines and ramp up staffing — rather than spending money on other types of prevention or education.

Reducing conflict

Trained personnel can de-escalate conflicts or prevent spats between students from getting out of hand.

Paul Smokowski, a researcher with the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center, said bullying is the biggest safety concern at schools and can be a precursor for deadly violence.

"The problem is for a significant proportion of those victims it's a traumatic experience," Smokowski said Tuesday. "Some students who are bullied can suffer mental health challenges as a result, and some may even lash out."

He said schools conduct some annual training on bullying but that they may not always follow through on preventing it and de-escalating it. Often, when school leaders receive reports of bullying, they'll suspend both the student who is accused of bullying and the student who says they're being bullied, and may not conduct a full investigation. That all can make the bullying worse, he said.

Schools should work on more "trauma-informed" training and practices for their employees and refer students who are being bullied to resources to help them cope, Smokowski said. They can also work on creating a school culture of no tolerance toward bullying, so students feel more empowered to speak up and less scared to speak up. Mentors can also help prevent violence, he said.

Amanda B. Nickerson, director of the Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention at the University of Buffalo, said schools need to also make efforts to change the behavior of students who bully, too.

Schools should also have behavior threat assessment teams that can identify students showing concerning signs, Nickerson said.

A state law that goes into effect for the 2024-25 school year requires schools to create those teams.

While bullying has always existed in schools, technology has made it 24/7, sometimes anonymous and much more public.

"It also is not an issue that schools can or should handle on their own," Nickerson said. "It takes a comprehensive effort in terms of the role of parents and community members as well."

Prevention efforts centered on stronger social and emotional development for students can help by enhancing trust and connectedness in the school community, said Hseih, the Michigan professor. Working through conflicts with students together can help, too, she said.

"And we have evidence for youth empowerment. How do we engage youth in creating this positive climate, in preventing violence?" she said. Some after-school programs have shown promise.

But bullying rates haven’t been going down, Smokowski said, as schools simply face too much of it for the limited number of adults they have in the buildings. Anti-bullying efforts that work may require an investment of staff and time to work with individual students.

School resource officers can be beneficial because they can form relationships with students and work on tips that come in, Jaclyn Schildkraut, a professor at State University of New York Oswego who also works with the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, told WRAL News earlier this year.

Smokowski believes officers aren’t proven to be effective. Some research has been inconclusive on officers, and school shootings have occurred at numerous schools that employed school resource officers.

Smokowski noted schools can use Medicaid funds to help them provide mental health services to students on campuses, with parental permission. Most school systems in North Carolina are Medicaid providers now, and Medicaid billings have risen sharply since the mid-2000s.

Smokowski and Schildkraut noted that in many cases, students bring weapons to school without intending to use them at school. They might bring them to show off to classmates or for self-defense on their way to and from school.