Senator Robert Singer on School Security and Mental Health System following Newtown Massacre

all of us certainly were were were sickened and and quite disturbed about the terrible terrible crisis that happened in Connecticut on Friday uh killing of innocent people 20 children six adults was beyond beyond uh uh couldn't our thought P couldn't even go there was so horrific um I think we have to take something out of this though and and from every tragedy you have to take something to work on one of is certainly taking a look at at school security in general and and it's not to run to to put in legislation to mandate things but I think they have to to know I can tell you for a fact that there are many schools in Lakewood that I've had the honor to go and speak in front of that the doors are open all the time and you're right it takes some money to put in a camera and a buzzing system and and to make sure doors are locked and secured but I think we have to do that in certain other schools uh young young uh men are allowed to walk around after class with no security sense in that I think every school even though we have been doing that through Homeland Security even though we've been doing it through our local police departments has to take a second look and to see how they protect their children or our our greatest asset our children uh to make sure they're safe while they're in school and and and that people that that wish to do them harm don't have have easy access at all to our school system that's one thing we have to do the second thing we really have to look at is the mental health system and that's really been a a a a sore point with me because I sit on the board of a mental health hospital we have short ch changed uh mental health dollars for years uh we have systematically closed our facilities in the state Arthur Brisbane in air uh marbor uh Mental Health Hospital up in M County and have shipped our problems out of state and now we bring them back in state when they close these facilities said don't worry about it the money is going to follow uh these problems into the communities there'll be money there for help in the communities it never happened um that's why for example the largest screening unit test unit at the hospital in the entire state of New Jersey is in Kimble Medical Center in Lakewood because many of the former uh marro patients reside in the uh boarding homes around here and therefore have pushed uh um Kimble to be that number one unit think about number one unit in this whole state of New Jersey um secondly as you even seen in New York they closing facilities down uh if we take a look at there's some questions that that will have to be answered in the future about what happened in Connecticut but I never heard any coms from s sty St child study team that worked with this this this this animal that's how you can call this animal when he was in high school uh you didn't hear a psychologist coming up and say yes he was my my patient during during school and I work with him that's why we recommend did he be homeschooled well we didn't see that that that the school system had it had someone saying yes when he was being homeschooled we came into the home and work with them so there has to be some kind of breakdown with that we have to be realistic that that the trouble youth have to be identified early and have to have help and that help has to come through the school system when they're identified and follow them into into adulthood and then when the time comes that they leave the school system there has to be a secondary area that's dealing with them certainly we heard that the entertainment that that his mother the bonding him and his mother had were shooting guns there's got to be something wrong with that that the bonding that you have with with a special needs child is shooting guns um and and therefore where did that fit in and was that the right uh uh uh area to be involved in and everything else that goes along with that and you heard that that that she said to uh to someone when she had had uh lunch with her breakfast on a regular basis that she couldn't even leave her child alone with a babysitter for a minute that the babysitter couldn't even go to the bathroom I mean there there's obviously problems here there's obviously they they they were not identified properly how do we stop these things from happening in the future and I don't know if legislation is the answer but I think maybe funding mental health dollars is the answer to make sure that schools have that that that uh capability of identifying young people that have problems working with the families working with those those young people through their school years and then after their school years so I think that's where we have to turn to identify that I think we have to also look as a state how we're dealing with with seriously ill people uh and secondly where those dollars are going if you're going to close institutions are those dollars going to the to the towns to the counties where those individuals now live they're not um and we're seeing that being short change so I think we have to take a hard to look how we're spending M Health dollars both on the local level on the state level and on the federal level