Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Questions continue to arise following Monday's incident at McKinley High School that saw a 15-year-old student being stabbed multiple times in a stairwell inside the school by a fellow 15-year-old student.
After the incident on Monday, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia revealed that the two primary individuals in the incident are known to each other, and this incident stems from another one that occurred over the summer in Downtown Buffalo.
"In July, there was a stabbing incident that occurred on Main Street around the Fountain Plaza area. What we are being told as of right now, these are the same individuals that were involved in that incident that occurred," Gramaglia said on Monday. "This was not a random act, this was a known situation. A known assailant, known victim in this case based on that earlier summer incident."
So if these two students were involved in a similar incident a couple of months prior to the start of the school year, why were these two students allowed to return to the same school?
According to Pastor James Giles with Buffalo Peacemakers, he says there was some sort of communication breakdown ahead of Monday's stabbing.
"I spoke with the principal. He had no idea that the same individuals who were involved in a stabbing at Fountain Plaza in the summer were in his school," said Giles in an interview with WBEN on Thursday.
Giles adds that Peacemakers were also unaware of both kids being in the same school to start the academic year at McKinley.
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Michael Cornell, president of the Erie-Niagara School Superintendents Association, says as a school leader, it's sad when children engage in this kind of activity with others, especially in school where such an emphasis of safety and security has been made.
"It's heartbreaking when that kind of stuff happens. And there's a lot of work that goes into finding out why that type of thing happens," said Cornell in an interview with WBEN. "Ultimately, the conversation quickly moves to, what can we all do to support the children in our communities so they don't feel like the way to resolve problems is through engaging in violence like that in a school? Schools are safe places, they have to be safe places for the developmental good of children. We can't turn them into armed encampments or barricaded encampments. Schools have to be safe and welcoming places for children, and as school leaders, we all try to get to that place."
While Cornell understands that a breakdown in communication could have happened between the district and the principal of McKinley High School, he admits he'd be surprised if that truly was the case.
"Knowing Dr. [Tonja] Williams as I do, and just knowing how law enforcement and school leaders work together in all communities - whether it's Hamburg, Orchard Park Ken-Ton or the City of Buffalo - I will guarantee you that every single police chief has in his or her cell phone the superintendent's phone number, cell number in their contacts, and they are in regular communication - phone calls, text messages - anytime anything happens," Cornell said. "I know lots of these folks around Western New York, and obviously I talk to superintendents all over the region and all over the state, and law enforcement is great at communicating with school superintendents when these things happen."
Cornell understands that an incident like this, especially at McKinley High School, will catch people's attention. However, he knows more often than not that incidents like this are not common.
"I will guarantee you that for every one of these things where somebody wants to wonder if there is a breakdown of communication between law enforcement and the school district - again, I'm not saying that's the case here, in fact, I'd be surprised if it was the case - but for every one of these things where somebody wants to ask that question, there are probably 1,000 incidences that were averted or prevented because of excellent regular communication and collaboration between law enforcement and school officials," Cornell stated.
While Cornell does not know how the students happened to end up back in the same school two months after their incident, he says it's possible the kids and the families simply did not want to leave the school.
"You could have a couple of kids who get into a fight at the Erie County Fair, and they happen to be students at the same school. Whether it's some Southtowns school - Lakeshore, Frontier, whatever - it's quite possible neither family wanted to have their kid taken out of the school and go to another school. That's something hard," Cornell pondered. "I went to three high schools as a kid. Being the new kid at a high school is hard. So if anybody thinks it's a super easy decision for a parent to decide, 'I'll just have my kid go to this other school,' or for a school to tell a family your kid's gonna have to go to another school, that is not an easy decision for a school administrator to make and not one a family is likely to embrace. So it's entirely likely the kids wanted to be in school because neither of them wanted to leave the school."
Regardless, Cornell says more often than not, communication between local law enforcement and the school districts continue to remain imperative, especially when it relates to any potential students having a run-in with police.
"I think there's a lot of communication about those things. Obviously you have to be careful about making sure you're not sharing information that you shouldn't, law enforcement and schools are always careful about that. But we all share our common goal of making sure our schools are safe," he said. "If there's information that we can have at our disposal that law enforcement has, they always give it to us. Again, our partners in law enforcement around the region are excellent. We have constant communication with them, and particularly as it relates to any type of a threatening situation."
Former Erie County District Attorney John Flynn was in office when the last stabbing incident at McKinley High School took place more than two-and-a-half years ago. He says when there's a pattern of behavior and a pattern of violence at certain schools like McKinley, action has to be taken to combat them.
"I know you've got hundreds, if not 1,000 kids in that school, can you protect and can you anticipate every single student, every single time, at every moment of the day? Obviously not, but I felt obviously bad about it. I felt bad about in the sense that it's unfortunate it happened at the same high school," said Flynn, who's now working with Lippes Mathias LLP. "This school has to start taking this seriously, which again, I'm not saying don't take it seriously, but they need to do whatever they can to ensure that these events just don't happen in the future."
Flynn says there are no rules or regulations in place that state that law enforcement has to notify a school or anyone about a student getting arrested. Even then, Flynn questions whether or not such a regulation is even possible to enforce.
"'Should there be communication? Should there be some type of mandatory reporting requirements that are put in place in our society, where schools get notified of certain incidents?' I'm not sure that a rule like that is actually doable," Flynn said with WBEN. "The reality is the overwhelming majority of these juvenile cases, when they are completed and done, they're sealed. They're sealed by the operation of the court. Once a case is sealed, then you can't tell anyone. At the arrest stage, there's nothing sealed yet. So if the principal at McKinley High School, or any school anywhere in Western New York, if any principal called the Buffalo Police Department or the Erie County Sheriff's or the Erie County DA's Office and said, 'Hey, I heard that one of my kids got arrested. Is that true?' We could certainly confirm that, because it's just at the arrest stage and nothing is sealed. ... There's no feasible way, no one has time for every kid that gets arrested to figure out where that kid goes to school and proactively notify that school."
However, Flynn does note that SRO officers at most school districts in Erie County are all uniformed police officers, and they have the ability to run an arrest report on any potential student, as long as they know upfront that a kid got arrested.
"You can't just run an arrest report on every kid in the school and see what pops up. You would have to know in advance if a kid got arrested, or if a kid allegedly got arrested. You could run that report and find out what the charges are on an arrest," he said. "Even for juveniles, most of those arrests go on report. Once they've been adjudicated and it's been sealed, then it won't show up. So the only way it's going to show up is after the arrest and before it gets adjudicated."
What does Flynn believe could be done in order to try and help districts become aware of a possible student's run-in with law enforcement?
A number of years ago when Raise the Age first came about and there was quite the increase in the number of juvenile cases, the Erie County District Attorney's Office established a High Risk Youth Team. This team was made up of law enforcement officials, along with SRO officers, public school officials and community members who identified some high risk kids and put them on certain radars of people within the Buffalo School District.
At the time Flynn left office earlier this year, that High Risk Youth Team was still in effect.
"I don't know what these kids did in July, I don't know if it rose to that level. Quite frankly, I don't know if the High Risk Youth Team is still up-and-running right now, but something like that concept is something that could be doable here," Flynn said. "You create a team of some sort with members of law enforcement, members of the Buffalo Public School District, community members, and you meet regularly and talk about certain kids who are known gang members, who are known to be high risk people, and then you get them on the radar that way."