On June 22, a school shooting occurred at the San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, Leyte. Three students died, and 20 others were injured. Before this incident, there had been several instances of stabbing and other forms of violence committed by youth offenders. This rise in violence and the Tacloban shooting is significant because it is the first school shooting in the country. Police say that this kind of violence is an isolated event because firearms are still not readily accessible to young kids at this time. Unfortunately, the fact that it has been done will surely encourage copycat kids to find a way and bypass the normal restrictions on gun access.
There has been a lot of discussion about the incident and whether or not the offenders can be punished under the present laws. I, for one, would like to veer away from the argument of punishment and reformation and focus on what I think is more important, which is how to prevent tragedies like this from occurring again.
Draconian AI-powered online monitoring. Other countries are now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to monitor social media for red flags of violence. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), threats, slurs, certain catchphrases can be caught early and flagged by AI. Algorithms can spot behavioral shifts, such as expression of anger, isolation, fixation on previous youth violence. Visual AI can scan images at a fast rate and detect images of firearms held by youths or other identified iconography. Combined with predictive software to assess threat, school authorities and law enforcement agencies can immediately spot these red flags.
In the Tacloban shooting, PNP sources indicate that one of the youth offenders had several posts about violent videos and some clearly indicative posts online. In addition, there were photos of one of the youths wearing the same T-shirt as some youth school shooters in the US. Had present authorities possessed such AI monitoring systems, then perhaps this could have helped prevent this tragedy. The typical libertarian objections of over-monitoring and privacy must fall when faced with the need to prevent more tragedies like this from occurring.
Police or security visibility. Perhaps while we wait for AI monitoring, a simpler way to prevent future incidents of violence would be increased police or even military presence in schools that cannot afford a sufficient amount of security. Composite teams of PNP, military, barangay or LGU Public order security forces can be assigned to schools to augment security and provide deterrence. Objections by left-leaning groups must be disregarded and cannot be allowed to prevent the implementation of this most basic of preventive measures in the face of increasing violence in schools.
Project Stigma. Lastly, a massive effort, both by school authorities and private groups related to mental health, must be implemented and supported by the government. A few months ago, I advocated for more support for the private group initiative called Project Stigma, which focused on mental health awareness and the promotion of assessment and recovery. The Tacloban shooting youthful protagonists clearly showed signs of mental health problems. Surely early intervention may have prevented the tragedy.
There are no hard and fast solutions to preventing another tragedy of this kind, but something must be done.
