Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Newsmax TV on Friday that greater school security and better intelligence were necessary to thwart shootings like the one Friday at Santa Fe High School.
"If you're a school superintendent nowadays, you've got to be pretty naïve if you're not securing your facilities," Kerik, who oversaw the city's forces during 9/11, told "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman.
"If somebody wants to create death and destruction, mass casualties — if this kid didn't have the proper weapons or firearms, he would've used explosives.
"If he didn't have explosives, he would've walked into the school with a machete.
"You don't know what's in their minds. You have to look at them in the aftermath of what happened," he said.
"The bottom line is: You need to secure the facilities.
"If any school superintendent or principal at this point doesn't get it, they shouldn't be in the position they're in."
Kerik told Bachman that intelligence would also be critical.
"Intelligence is going to be the big contributing factor in stopping this," he said. "Monitoring these kids' social media platforms, developing a reporting mechanism in schools where kids can report stuff like this.
"It's extremely important.
"Don't tell me that nobody — somebody who knew this kid — didn't know that he was like this.
"Somebody knew," Kerik said. "Somebody saw his social media.
"They have to have a platform to report this — and the schools have to have a platform to monitor and look at this stuff for everyone at their school, like a flagging mechanism."
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