You’ve found three examples over a ten year period of time in a country with 30,000 schools. Should I save you some time and stipulate that it’s possible that having an SRO at every one of the 30,000 schools might prevent a single shooting incident per year? And if that were the case, it’s still a huge waste of funds for most schools.
Back to school night citizen hero.
202 students have been tragically, horribly and unfortunately killed in school shootings since 1970.
Imagine if those incidents quoted in those articles had not been stopped? What would have been the outcry?
It has caused an understandable uproar and media coverage.
To the point where we are debating the elimination of the 2nd amendment to the constitution and ultimately gun confiscation.
The costs of these initiatives and the economic impact of these industries going away would pay for an SRO in every school for all of millennia.
I am not pro gun or anti gun. I’m pro kid safety while in a school and the economics are meaningless to me in the big picture.
We want to build a fantasy fast train to make thr highways less crowded in CA for 30 billion dollars and we can’t find the money for SROs etc?
I just don’t buy it.
Spending per capital per student has skyrocketed across the country and no amount of money seems to be making a difference.
We aren’t underfunding education. There’s more to it than that.
I want the kids to be as safe as possible while in school. It’s not an impenetrable defense mechanism.
“The costs of these initiatives and the economic impact of these industries going away would pay for an SRO in every school for all of millennia.”
Even if that is true it wouldn’t stop what is happening. We’ve seen proof of that with the shootings that have happened at schools with SROs.
I do think SROs can have their benefits - presence in school for a myriad of issues, students seeing police as a partner /positive figure not an enemy, etc. but as a tool in preventing school shootings it is not effective. Still much better than armed teachers, though.
Nobody wants kids to be unsafe. The question is whether the current responses to increasing safety are actually increasing safety and at what cost.
You are fortunate to live in an area where “economics are meaningless” but most of us live in areas where school funding is a zero sum game. So if funds are being spent on something that isn’t meaningfully contributing to safety, that’s a waste.
The reality is that kids are never going to be 100% safe. We can examine what the most likely dangers are and spend accordingly (and I suspect if we actually look at facts, we’d find that the biggest dangers are probably things we wouldn’t immediately think of like car accidents or drug overdoses) or we can be like the politicians and spend what feels like an endless supply of Monopoly money on what makes people feel good. SROs fall in the latter category for most schools.
@tpike12 there are numerous examples. Truth is, those parents at the schools where SROs prevented violence are definitely thankful that money was budgeted to fill this position. It seems “worthless” until it isn’t.
We must ban dodgeball to protect our kids and it’s scary how often school shootings occur, but armed SROs are a waste of money.
No idea what the dodgeball reference is about, but to give another example of how the funds are spent at my kids’ school, there are no HS athletics programs because there is no budget for coaches or facilities for them. Kids who want to play a sport have to have a parent drive them to one of the other designated district schools that have an athletics program- none are closer than 5 miles distance - or a private team facility. Given how highly selective schools give outsized admissions preference for athletes, it’s yet another way that low income or single working parent household students are SOL. While wealthy families or families with at least one stay at home parent might have the availability to drive their student from one school to another or pay for transportation or a private team sport, low income and middle class families who don’t have a stay at home parent don’t have that luxury.
So at our school anyway, there’s $100k for an SRO yet no funding for athletics or even transportation to athletics. Now, those athletics probably wouldn’t be dodgeball, but they might make a difference in kids’ health and/or college admissions.
It’s a finite resource. We can spend on things that demonstrably make a difference or on things that make us feel good.
Why do you need a sniper? Unless the active shooter is in a football stadium, you will have to be within 100 yards to get a clear line of sight to the shooter. If you confront a shooter within a classroom, you are typically within 30ft.
The main reason SROs don’t have rifles is because school boards won’t allow it. If the OP is a decision maker, there is no fundamental reason a SRO couldn’t carry or have access to a rifle.
Just waiting for the inevitable outrage and lawsuit when an SRO accidentally shoots kids.
You are misquoting me. By cutting off my sentence and adding a period, you are making it appear that I suggested snipers are needed when I was just replying to another poster who suggested they were needed. What I wrote was as follows:
My point is not that snipers are the issue or key component, it’s that getting people armed and proficient with long guns - not hand guns like the SROs carry - is likely to be most effective against a school shooting situation.
As for why SROs don’t carry rifles, again - it’s about what looks good and makes people feel safe, not what is effective. Parents wouldn’t like to see an SRO walking around school with a rifle, so again we’re trading what might actually be useful for what gives a good impression. And that’s the root of this problem. We’re not spending money on things that actually make schools safer, we’re spending money on pacifying people.
We do have an armed officer on our high school campus. After reading this thread I got curious (I knew we had an officer but not if he was armed) and found an SRO policy. It’s from our local police department. They are regular officers and employees of our city, not the schools. No indication that the school is paying for them to be there (but I’m not certain). There’s clear descriptions of their role, which includes, resource to the school community, visible deterrent, education, delinquency prevention, and conducting normal police activities on or near campus.
In our community there’s an emphasis On the positive role of police in the community and the police department actively works to maintain this. I’m thankful for this (and realize this isn’t the case everywhere), and haven’t minded the police presence on my kids’ campus. The officer is viewed positively by the school community. I would never think that one particular guy should be relied on to save the day in an active shooter situation, but I hope he’d be there as a very first responder to do his job. I hope the combination of all the efforts the school is making towards better security will be effective. I hate that these kids have to experience active shooter drills because we can’t guarantee it won’t happen here.
No SRO at the kids’school but the local PD are there regularly and the school, PD, EMS , and volunteer parents and students recently held a live shooter drill (on a weekend) as part of the community’s preparedness.
I think this is in large part because of all the errors observed in the Parkland tragedy.
EDIT: However we are in a smallish, low crime atea, so the PD is not over extended. I have no objection to SROs
The well publicized mass shootings are quite rare, and probably not by themselves a reason for police officers stationed in schools to be cost effective at preventing or stopping crime (versus other possible deployment of police officers).
Whether stationing a police officer at a given school makes sense could depend on:
A. The general level of crime at and near the school that the presence of the police officer could deter or stop.
B. Whether the school is under a particular criminal threat (temporary or permanent).
C. Whether the police officer’s interaction with students improves relations between the community and the police department.
D. What impact the reduction of police services elsewhere or the added cost of an additional officer has.
Depending on what definition you want to use, US k-12 schools have 3-4 active shooter incidents a year. If SROs can prevent 1-2 active shooter incidents a year, that’s a 25-50% decrease in percentage terms.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/11/us/school-shootings-united-states.html
While active shooter incidents make most of the news, they account for a small percentage of violent deaths in schools.
According to https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/iscs18.pdf , the number of active shooter deaths for each year from 2000 to 2017 was 0 to 3 in most years, but four years had outlier numbers (30, 10, 9, 5).
In comparison overall violent deaths in schools per year ranged from 32 to 63 during that year range, with homicides ranging from 12 to 32 each year. Of course, non-fatal violent crimes and theft are far more common, as shown in other tables.
In other words, the overall risk of crime (including homicide) is likely to be many times greater than that of an active shooter incident. So the decision to station a police officer in most schools should be based on how that would affect the overall risk of crime, versus the costs involved.
Most of the violent incidents at our high school happen after school off campus. I don’t think any have involved guns. Nevertheless there are some in the community agitating for SROs. There seems to be a lot of evidence that in schools with SROs they end up criminalizing a lot of minor misbehavior and targeting minority populations. More on the subject here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/02/22/putting-more-cops-in-schools-wont-make-schools-safer-and-it-will-likely-inflict-a-lot-of-harm/?utm_term=.b43dfeff753e
I think it is smart to have the drills and also very sad, as people have mentioned.
I do remember as a really young student the bomb drills and hiding under your desk. It seemed about as scary (not) as a fire drill. Never did any tornado or earthquake drills, doesn’t happen really in our area.
However, though more remote than fires (especially the wild fires unfortunately) and tornados in the Great Plains, the shooting drills seem like they maybe a bit more frightening. More real.
Lousy thing for a little kid to worry about at that age. Poor parents too.
The SVU handles all the sexting-type crimes. These have greatly increased, and now the SROs are tasked with investigating them in my school system when students in a high school are involved.