CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON PREVENTING SCHOOL RAGE.

Byline: David R. Baker Staff Writer

With the fatal gunfire at Colorado's Columbine High School still resonating across the country, dozens of teachers, administrators and peace officers gathered Saturday at the Skirball Cultural Center to discuss youth violence.

The daylong conference focused on ways to spot troubled kids and prevent violent outbursts on campus.

``There's no question that we're going to see more school shootings,'' warned author Gavin de Becker, whose safety consulting firm organized the conference. ``They tend to cluster. . . . Young boys are very impressionable.''

Robert J. Martin, vice president of Gavin de Becker Inc., said the goal was to bring together people who might have to face such problems in the future.

``These are the people in the trenches: the teachers, the police,'' Martin said. ``These people haven't been pulled together in this way before, as a working group.''

James McGee, the chief psychologist for the Baltimore Police Department, said most of the students who have attacked their peers in the recent string of incidents have some things in common. They are middle-class, white boys, typically between 11 and 17 years old, living in rural areas. They are bright and do well in school but have trouble bonding with others and are ridiculed as geeks by more popular students, McGee said.

``These kids are chronic outsiders,'' said McGee, who also developed a psychological profile for the Unabomber case. ``Since nursery school, they've been shunned, put aside, and they're very angry about that.''

They tend to have an interest in the military and the occult, like violent movies and music, keep diaries and show suicidal tendencies.

McGee said such kids rarely attract the attention of adults. Although they may act out their feelings by attacking animals, they rarely get into serious trouble with the law. They tend to be anti-social, even at home, but parents often leave them alone in hopes they will grow out of it.

``By the time they're 16, they already have the `Do Not Enter' sign on the bedroom door, and they mean it,'' he said, adding that since their grades tend to be good, most parents just back off. ``If they're down in the basement building a bomb, at least they're quiet.''

They tend to plan their attacks well in advance and usually strike between December and May. They also often warn people around them of the attacks, either through direct threats or vague statements, such as telling other students that ``something really big'' will happen soon.

De Becker suggested schools create committees with parents that would meet regularly to review problems encountered with individual students.

He said that not all students at risk for committing violent acts will actually do so. ``These boys, even (Columbine students) Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, might not have gone on to do these things,'' de Becker said.