“I’m disturbed as much as I am anxious. So, too are my peers. A colleague here at the paper is sending his daughter to kindergarten next week, too. Her school will have two armed officers. Ours won’t, but friends have advised we feel confident because our community’s police station is less than a mile from the playground where Caroline will play.
“What a relief.
“Adding to my discomfort was a recent NPR report detailing a U.S. Department of Education finding that, during the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” NPR, working with Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, found that only 11 of those incidents could be confirmed — either from the schools or through media reports.
“Surely 11 is a better number than 240 when quantifying gun violence in America’s schools, but the reality that data around these incidents is troubling — for journalists and parents alike. ” – Ed Forbes in School shootings and armed teachers: sending my kindergartner to school in 2018 [via usatoday.com]
The threat is in the same building as your child…LE is a mile away…Your state/school district doesn’t allow teachers and staff to carry…THE THREAT IS IN THE SAME BUILDING AS YOUR CHILD
You nailed it BALDWIN.
Who says LE is a mile away?
A police station is a mile away, but how many regular duty armed officers are there, ready to abandon the station and race to the school at a moment’s notice? Depending on the police station, that number might be zero.
Exactly! This is a reality I had to work through with our church security a while back. Our church is literally located next to the police station (adjoined property line). Someone even suggested installing a pathway between the two properties (which would never be tactically sound when responding). Coming from the LE side I had a really difficult time convincing everyone that everyone is out on patrol, not sitting at the station. I had comments like “I see people there all the time.” It is called shift changeover.
When I was on patrol, we were out working our districts. At night, there was almost never anybody at the substation, unless we were booking evidence or really down on reports. You need to train people to be “immediate responders.” As a former “first responder,” we were usually the cleanup and report committee.
Most in law enforcement are not like Deputy (I refuse to mention his name) in Broward County. Most want to be the first one in, but the reality is, it takes a few minutes to get there, and the incident is usually over before we can even arrive.
This whole “Police Station a Mile Away” is about “Perceived Safety” vs. “Reality.”
In my days in military law enforcement, you always avoided the law enforcement desk and Site Security Control Center. It is where the flight chief tended to hang out. Another note to consider is communication. Even in a perfect scenario, it may easily take 3 to 5 minutes from the dialing of 911 to someone being actively enroute..
i had a similar issue. no armed school personnel but the police station was literally across the street. i would be fine with this situation. there are no absolutes or guarantees, you can only increase your chances.
I wouldn’t consider that comforting. Earlier this summer, my teenage cousin stole a city-owned golf cart in plain view of the police station and the cops didn’t catch up with him until 5 hours later when the battery died.
Problem being, in my experience, we didn’t sit around at the station waiting for somebody to call in. Traffic was out making us money (I mean, ensuring road safety), while the three patrol roamed around the city (which wasn’t that big) taking calls.
We once had an altercation in the parking lot (we encouraged eBay transactions to meet up there, because it was ‘safer’) and it still took five minutes for the first patrol car to get there.
And don’t forget about half of the staff that is just playing hide and seek with the brass…running errands, sleeping, whatever part of their personal life that work gets in the way of.
Eleven confirmed incidences out of what, 100,000 schools?
A quick Internet search shows about 94,000 Public, 27,000 Private and about 3,000 Charter Schools for K-12, so somewhere between 120,000 and 130,000 in 2016. Good estimate on your part!
I’ve come to conclusion that we are too safe. Despite the country never being statistically safer for literally everyone we’re still freaking out over one in a million shots, refusing to let our kids play outside, refusing to let adults chose for themselves, lowering flags for every headache and sneeze.
We’ve grown far too safe. So safe that people have lost all context. I get so sick of hearing parents in their 40’s talk about how safe it was when they were kids and they’d never let their kids do the things they did despite that when they were kids the country was far less safe. No context. It’s all just primal ape-like fear motivating everyone.
Obsessing over a one in a million chance some nut will shoot up your kids school while there’s 450 in a million chance your kid will die on the bus to school and a 2,500 in a million chance your kid will die in your car on the way to school because your stupid ass thought the bus was too dangerous.
I’m in my 40s, and clearly remember my parents kicking me out of the house at 6:30am when they went to work (the assumption was that I would find something to do before the bus came) and I wasn’t allowed back into the house until it started to get dark.
These days that’s unheard of, and I think it’s a real shame. I built a raft and paddled my way up and down the creek behind the house. Me and my similarly-displaced friends built a massive fort deep in the woods, which we would defend with our .22s against marauding paper-plate-persons-of-indiginous-heritage.
I see my similarly-aged friends with children freaking out because Timmy went onto the back porch into the gated yard in the suburban housing development unsupervised, and I wonder if Timmy’s gonna raise his kids in a padded room with filtered air and nutritious pastes. Because he will certainly have no concept of being left alone for five or six hours every night with a hammer, some nails, scrap wood, well-worn 20-year-old Playboys and a box of rimfire ammo.
That was how I grew up as well, way out in the country. But I often had to remind myself, anytime I think it was all just great, in a tiny school that didn’t hit 3A until I was in high school, one kid lost the use of his arm, another lost his left thumb, 1 died on a 3-wheeler, one drown in a creek, 2 died in car wrecks, one was made permanently deaf in his right ear, one took a fall and was brain damaged, one cut clean through his knee with a hatchet, and I myself would have died a couple of times if I hadn’t gotten really lucky with impromptu medical care. I still have a pretty significant scar from a buddy putting a knife through my forearm while we were making a fort.
My kids roam the woods, but my son has limited use of one of his fingers from a bad break, and some muscle damage from playing with a knife and putting it clean through his forearm.
Yes, we were free, and we took a lot of risks, but some kids paid for those risks with their lives, or were disabled for life.
Well yeah, I didn’t come out completely in-tact either…
..but I know a couple with a 16 year old kid who still can’t watch Bambi because it’s too violent. They’ve pulled him out of every school, alternative school, sport, and extracurricular group the second he felt even remotely uncomfortable.
He’s a good kid, but he’s not going to survive in the real world.
But those who survived were better off for it.
They’re not the people who would kill themselves with a ladder if it didn’t have a half dozen warning stickers on it.
This country has lost its collective mind! They are paranoid about the wrong things. This Hoplophobia (the “IRRATIONAL” fear of guns) fueled by the MSM is just that, irrational. But it is not just the fear of guns, it is the generalized fear of anything and everything. Children in this country are safer than they have ever been in history. The idiot who wrote the article ought to read the statistics for child deaths by family members. His kindergarten-aged daughter is in more danger of dying by his wife suffocating her that some nutjob shooting up her school. More kids die at the hands of a family member every year than all the kids shot by anybody combined.
“I’ve come to conclusion that we are too safe. ”
Not gun related, but under the too safe category…
There is a child care facility near where by brother lives. Recently, the 4′ chain-link fence around the playground was replaced with a 6′ fence. Because people will reach over the fence and abduct kids? I guess that could happen.
At the same time they put down rubber matting down all over the playground. AND! Now when outside, all children MUST wear a bike helmet. Even on walks.
Years ago, one of my sons fell off a jungle gym and got a reasonable cut on his hand. Lots of blood. The school gym teacher patched him up, the school admin gave us a call. Is he dead? No. Will he live? Yes. Can he finish out the school day? Of course. Done. Next!
I want to say “kids these days,” but it’s really the administrators and lawyers.
Having one kid get through elementary school and another with one year left, I whole heartedly agree with the administrator/lawyer comment. The rules for the “playground” almost completely negate actual play. The dumbing down and equal outcome push are setting our children for failure.
I’m so old, I remember when craven cowardice and pathetic helplessness weren’t considered virtues.
Blue is the new yella
Golly gosh gee my across the way neighbor was RAPED and beaten last year. Our po-leece station is a mere 3 blocks away. Didn’t matter. And my oldest son(who has since moved into new digs) lived between 2 cops ‘splaining to me why he didn’t like guns in the house-“were good” LOL. You can’t fix stupid but you can shoot it. Home school if you can…
There was an incident a few months ago: I live in an apartment complex and one night, there was a woman in the hallway screaming “he’s going to kill me, he’s going to hurt me”. She had a dog in her arms and looked very distraught. Crying, red face, the whole works. And there was a man nearby, looked old and drunk and angry. So, I went for my gun, peeked the door open and she begged to come inside, she lives here in a nearby apartment. Long story short, she was able to come inside and I stopped the threat. Details don’t matter, what’s important is that we called the cops and told them to come to my apartment. Yes he was a threat, please respond immediately.
Two hours later, he eventually left and the cops went to HER apartment. Not mine. She was able to go home before then, but they didn’t know she was home because the only call that went in was from us when she was at my place. I called the police back and asked why it took them so long and she gave me some song and dance. I kept asking why it took so long but she just kept sidetracking me, eventually I gave up. So the moral of the story: It takes 10 seconds to go for your gun, two hours to call the police and have them show up at the wrong place when a woman was inches away from serious bodily harm. The man was eventually served with a restraining order and last I heard, was either in jail or a psych ward (I forget which of the two). He wasn’t allowed at our apartment complex, the manager was well aware of him and to call the police the instant he shows up. What he did was wait outside until she came outside to walk her dog, then he stalked her and prevented her from going home, hence why she ended up on my floor instead of hers, the next floor up.
“How close did you have to be
“To the school
“During a shooting
“For it to count
“As a school shooting?
“Only” a mile. San Bernardino police, Orlando police, Boward County Sherriff’s, that SRO at Columbine, and Virgina Tech police were closer…..
https://ctc.usma.edu/lessons-learned-from-the-police-response-to-the-san-bernardino-and-orlando-terrorist-attacks/
If you don’t have a gun at the point of contact AND are willing to fight to the death, then you’re screwed. Armed teacher fits the bill, but suicidally stupid trachers want to obstruct that…. American gun debate in microcosm.
“Adding to my discomfort was a recent NPR report detailing a U.S. Department of Education finding that, during the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” NPR, working with Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, found that only 11 of those incidents could be confirmed — either from the schools or through media reports.”
School shootings are incredibly rare. The author acknowledged that. Then the idiot keeps worrying about these incredibly rare events.
Worry about the junk the children are eating, now that is a whole lot more likely to harm them, and we parents can actually do something about that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
‘When Seconds Count LE is Just Outside the Door Deciding Now is Not the Time to Go Inside.’
Columbine
Newton
Parkland
Pulse Night Club
and the list goes on……
Police have no legal duty to protect you as an individual.
Depending upon who you are, they may have no desire, as I my family found out during the 1919 Chicago race riot.
Memorize:
* Police have no legal duty to protect individuals.
* Police have no legal liability when they fail to protect individuals.
* Police not specifically assigned as bodyguards have virtually no ability to protect individuals.
The police don’t protect individuals. They draw chalk outlines around individuals unable or unwilling to protect themselves.
If you’re not able and willing to protect YOURSELF, you’re just not going to get protected AT ALL.
Anybody who tells you different is a LIAR.
This is most certainly true. (Sorry, old Lutheran Catechism joke.)
The police have no duty to protect you, except in certain cases like when they disarm you and put you in a jail cell. Here are some links to case law –
https://fee.org/articles/just-dial-911-the-myth-of-police-protection/
https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-police-have-no-obligation-to-protect-you-yes-really/?singlepage=true
+1 “The police do not protect individuals.”
The job of police is to apprehend law-breakers, which happens after the fact. They may catch your killer, but you will be dead, and your family will grieve their loss.
With that said, I know several local LEOs, and they are “sheepdogs” like most POTG. However, they privately admit that they cannot be everywhere. The local LEOs (Fort Collins, CO) appreciate concealed carriers because we are force multipliers.
If you carry, when you pick up your permit, ask the local LEO what to do in case of DGU. Usually, it’s “show us your hands”. YMMV.
School shootings are rare, but the results can be catastrophic. So I understand parents’ concerns.
However, what I don’t understand is the stupidity of the same parents who then require schools to remain defenseless.
Even more stupid and truly unforgivable is the same parents putting their kids’ lives in the hands of cops who only care about getting home safe at night and doubling-up on overtime paperwork to collect a bigger pension.
Wasn’t this report fabricated and needing correction? I seem to recall an article detailing such issues.
Create a gun-free zone? You should be responsible for enforcing it.
Kid gets shot at gun-free school…sue the school board…town…county…state…
Do that a few times and things might change
A lawsuit won’t work, because of sovereign immunity.
The gun-free signs at schools are fake, unless the law is enforced like at airports – scans, searches, etc. All (and I mean ALL) school shootings occurred in the Liberal Panacea of a total gun ban. Think about that for a moment – total gun ban, but the criminals ignored the law! Whodathunk?
We don’t have a gun control problem. We have a Criminal Control Problem.
The MSM and anti-gun activists have whipped the public into a frenzy with false statistics and false narratives making us parents believe that schools are war zones. As noted above, our children are in no more danger than we were when we attended school, it has only been more widely publicized via media outlets looking to sell ad space or air time. You are more likely to be involved in a car crash on the way to school than being shot at there. Relax, let kids be kids, let them walk to school or ride their bikes or take the bus. You cannot protect them from everything.
Figures NEVER lie, liars ALWAYS figure. 30
How long might it take for the police to transit that ONE MILE is a question to seldom asked, and in-so-far as I can tell, not adequately answered. By the way, courts at various levels, have repeatedly ruled that the police owe no particular service to the individual, protection especially. Oh yes, the police do arrive on scene eventually, and proceed to take notes. They might even provide first aid.
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