This thread is too negative on SROs. SROs by the federal definition are sworn LEOs, so they should be as well trained as others in their department. If you think your local police department is completely incompetent, who do you think the first responders are going to be at schools which don’t have SROs?
It is very sweet that parents are grateful, but the investigation at the Great Mills shooting did conclude the shooter died by suicide, and the SRO did not hit the shooter at any time. It is not negative at all, it is merely reality. Professional LEOs will be the first to note that their accuracy rates, particularly in these situations, are not reliable. One can acknowledge their bravery and still be candid about their efficacy.
First responders in these cases are usually SWAT teams and or sniper specialists. Neither expertise is present in most SROs
Hopefully they are well trained teams of people with rifles and tactical gear. Not a single retiree aged person armed with a handgun, chosen for his/her ability to interact with teens and who goes to the range once a year.
I have to laugh at the idea the first responders in these situations are going to be sniper specialists. While a few major metro places like the NYPD may have snipers, the vast majority of police departments won’t. A sniper isn’t necessarily useful in these situations. They are trained to make long distance shots with a clear view, which you rarely have with a school building.
Even regularly trained response teams will have rifles, not handguns. Snipers are great if you can get them but even the best sharpshooters out there are pretty ineffective if all they have is their handgun versus a school shooter armed with a rifle.
Again, reality here, peeps. Not what makes us feel better. Reality is most SROs, even the best intentioned ones are far more likely to be ineffective at best or shoot innnocent bystanders at worst if faced with the stereotypical school shooter situation. SROs are a costly way to make parents feel better while providing little in the way of added security.
Edited to add: there are definitely close up settings where a rifle is actually a liability, so once an officer armed with a handgun got that close s/he might have an advantage… but good luck getting that close.
This might be the saddest discussion ever. Game over…we lose.
The assailant who chooses to shoot himself while being engaged by the SRO or LEO is as good imho as being shot in the shootout. Same results.
And the average town is not spending anything like “millions of dollars” of SROs.
Maybe in a large city. And the it’s still a tiny percentage of the revenue flowing to education. It’s not changing a thing. It would be cut from the budget and the extra wouldn’t be reallocated. It would move to another city issue.
We both know it won’t much matter who the first responders are before massive carnage occurs. The Sandy Hook shooter killed 29 in just 4 minutes. The idea that any first responder can stop a massacre is simply faulty. Nor can a SRO. The shooters generally plan on committing suicide, so I’m not sure why interaction with the SRO matters.
Even in a MCOLA the fully loaded cost of a full time SRO would be around $100k (it’s a little more than that in our MCOLA area, but that’s because the benefits are good.)
There is no way to honestly say that $100k a year at a school is too tiny an amount to bother worrying about. At a time when some schools have had to cut things like art programs and the school lunches are disgusting, processed crap because the budget per meal is some ridiculous amount like $1, $100k is not chump change.
I’d rather bring back some of the art programs or the librarians (that were eliminated due to budget cuts), or have some actual college counseling, or institute some of the gifted courses that didn’t fit in the budget or one of the thousand other things that might contribute to the education of the kids than have a single, ineffective SRO that’s only there to make parents feel better and who might accidentally shoot my kid.
It’s not foolproof and won’t eliminate everything for sure.
And it depends on a lot of factors. But 4 minutes is a long time in a situation like this. A response in under a minute or even two would have potentially saved a lot of lives. In sandy hook.
I was responding primarily to the situation in MD. Cornered and shot at. He killed him self. Good. He obviously had been stopped at that point. I don’t think it matters if the Leo misses or not. It was all over at that point.
Yes ultimately they may save the last bullet for themselves. But it often comes a bit quicker if someone is shooting back.
I do get that it is not a perfect answer. And realistically it’s an interim step that’s better than nothing if short of perfect.
My point is that it’s not better than nothing. It’s just not. You’re assuming it’s better because seeing the armed SRO makes you think it’s safer, but the reality is that it’s not probable or logical.
One of the reasons I’m on cc is that even though my kids’ school is a magnet school where 100% of the graduates go to college and dozens go to T20 colleges each year, it doesn’t even have a guidance counselor that’s dedicated fully to college counseling. Seniors get two separate one hour meetings with the counselor, starting the fall of their senior year. Kids from families that are willing to research or who have the money to pay private counselors do just fine. Kids from families with no college background and limited financial means have more of a potluck experience. With just one more guidance counselor, dozens of these high intelligence kids might have very different college acceptances. We’re talking a good shot at life changing opportunities.
Ask me to choose how to spend money at this school and I’d fire the SRO in a heartbeat and hire another college counselor. Or art teacher, or increase funding for band, or bring back one of the librarians.
This was better than nothing.
https://www.oregonlive.com/gresham/2014/06/oregon_high_school_shooting_re_5.html#incart_maj-story-1
If 100 percent of students at this school are going to college and so many to top 20s or whatever with no gc or staff, I think maybe we need less guidance counselors in most schools then.
But no one is supporting or saying that taking away from core educational support for this service or protection. It’s not always a zero sum game. It’s not how resource allocation happens in most municipality’s.
And how do you know it doesn’t work? You know the examples it didn’t but you don’t know about potentially countless other issues that have been prevented or stopped simply because of the presence. They aren’t carried as national stories or even known.
Every drunk driver doesn’t stop because of the police. And death for those under 16 are orders of magnitude more deadly to our children than these horrific school shootings.
But we do stop some drunk drivers and many people think twice because of this as well.
I don’t know if it works. My instincts and experience as a human tells me it helps, at least marginally.
However I don’t think the statement that it doesn’t work are more than personal opinion and anecdotes either.
If we had a public health study of gun violence and ways to prevent it, we would actually have data on this. But of course, we can not have a study
The chance that my kid is going to be at a school with a school shooter where an SRO makes one iota of difference in the outcome… so small it couldn’t be calculated. How long do we need to search for a single instance where we think an SRO might have made a difference in a country with what, 30,000 schools and 300+ million people?
But if we instead choose to spend money that was used for the SRO and fencing (only the front part of the school - one of four sides mind you) on college counseling, art, school lunch or any one of a hundred other things that makes a real and immediate difference.
This whole subject should be examined by Levitt in his next “Freakonomics” book. What makes us feel better vs. reality…
Although then it becomes part of the “excessive administrative overhead” that everyone likes to complain about in educational spending. Each line item is individually small, and may be popular or have a vocal constituency pushing it, but the cumulative effect on the budget may be significant.
Made a difference in Illinois.
https://hannity.com/media-room/good-guy-with-a-gun-armed-officer-stops-school-shooting-in-illinois/
Saving lives in Atlanta.
“no gc or staff”
There is a GC. One. And he does college counseling. Along with dozens of other duties because there is no one else to do the other things.
That’s the point - school funding is a zero sum game in most districts. The money that our school district carved out for SROs came out of reduced spending for other areas. For some schools that might make sense, but for many other schools it’s a poor tradeoff to give up things that provide ongoing and real benefit to students for something that makes parents feel better but which is most likely to provide zero actual difference.
Stopping a gunmen in Tennessee.