"If there's one thing I could do to make schools safer, it would be to have a School Resource Officer in every school," said SLED Chief Mark Keel.
Keel was speaking before the Senate Education Committee, who held a hearing tonight on the issue of school safety in the wake of the Newtown massacre.
Keel was one of several officials who spoke to the committee, among them were State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais.
Both Keel and Zais said that decisions with respect to funding and deployment should be made locally.
On the question of having teachers armed, Keel said, "I don't know of a single law enforcement officer in favor of teachers carrying guns."
Would you be willing to pay more taxes if it meant more School Resource Officers in your town's schools?
As the chief law enforcement officer in the state, Keel said that school safety is the number one issue he's been hearing about of late. It resonates with him personally. "I drop my kids off at school every day and I want to know that I'm going to pick them up. There's no cost that's too much for me to want to make sure that happens."
Keel said steps can be taken in the short term to make schools safer, such as installing panic buttons or allowing doors to be locked only from the inside. Over the longer term, he thinks that, in the design phase, school safety needs to be a paramount concern when new buildings are being considered.
"We don't want our schools to look like prisons, but there are some things that can be done in terms of exits and entrances that can make schools safer," Keel said.
During his testimony, Keel said he believes every school should have a safety and security plan in place. He also said that he believes dealing with school safety is the number one issue facing the General Assembly this session.
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Shawn, sounds like the SRO is a good thing, consistent with the whole concept of solving problems as locally as possible, as informally as possible. Still, it does seem like it is a good idea for the school, but not necessarily a solution to an armed assault on the school. There have been lots of suggestions in this thread, and maybe the best answer is a combination of these suggestions. Let's have the armed SRO deal with behavioral and bullying problems, as well as general school security, being the local subject matter expert on how to keep the school secure. Maybe taxing guns and ammo to help pay for this program would help the local school districts. I am sure the NRA would support that because they have already proposed armed police in the schools. And lastly, to minimize the threat, the country takes steps to remove the weapons of mass destruction from the marketplace. Yes, Christine, a weapon that can kill a couple dozen children in a minute is a weapon of mass destruction. That is not hyperbole. There is no lawful need for these weapons, and none of the gun proponents have even attempted to give a rational justification for their existence. The best I have seen is some fear that the military will take over the country so we all need to be armed sufficiently to defeat them. Your paranoia does not trump my skepticism.
You want to pay someone a government salary, plus benefits, plus vehicle, plus retirement to stand at the entrance of the school all day long? What type of police officer do you think would be selected for that type of insufferable job? I would venture to say that it would be one selected by his or her superiors who is already ineffective on road patrol, but you want to depend upon him or her to be ready to respond decisively to protect our kids, right? And then to put him or her in plainclothes so they are "less frightening" to the kids is laughable. Kids aren't afraid of cops until mom or dad points at one and says "If you don’t behave I'll have him take you to jail." And as history has shown, a responding officer seeing someone with a gun in his or her hand not wearing a uniform is a recipe for disaster. So, before you spout off more nonsense about what a school resource officer's responsibilities should be, get off the Internet, pick up the phone and call one of the local police departments and ask to shadow an SRO for a day at the school to see just what an important role one plays on a daily basis in the lives of the students and faculty there. While I understand the mania parents are feeling, absolute safety and security is a pipe dream.
most all the discussion/debate has been on everything but gun control...eg, the PATCH posts and taxes to pay for security guards. i used to wonder how hitler convinced a reasonable intelligent german people to hate jews... after witnessing what the NRA (gun mfgs) has(have) done to the american people with their propaganda (and what the kochbros did with voterID)...i no longer wonder...it was a piece of cake for hitler... course i shudda stopped wondering after what the tobacco industry did to us...
[CLIPs] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DDRIGHTS/message/8739 1. And we're [CA] fixing the money problem. 2. A poll last year showed that 64% of Californians would be willing to pay higher taxes for K-12 schools and 54% for health and human services. But only 17% would dig deeper for prisons... 3. The chronically unbalanced [CA] state budget is nearing stability, thanks to significant spending cuts and the tax increase the governor [moonbeam] talked voters into approving. [takes time to dig out from the terminator GOP's policies] BTW tho i would rather live in SC (sville) than CA...i know of no californians who will move to SC to pay less taxes...course many other factors to consider...but assuming all else equal..
however the NRA folks have refused to put gun control on the table...as it would decrease gun mfg's profits... to repeat scarborough quote: “This is not about protecting the Second Amendment,” he reiterated...“This is about gun manufacturers making millions and millions and millions of dollars. This is about retailers making millions and millions and millions of dollars. Do you know how much money these people have made over the slaughter of 20 innocents in Newtown?" and the profits from the 20 child murders is criminal irony...gun crazy cowboys rushed out to buy more guns...incomprehensible!!!
we can do more to protects our children by working on local issues (like security guards) than trying to get US congress to pass gun control laws...and impossible to get gun control laws passed in SC legislature...andand; the petition of sville man to ban WMDs in sville is, as said, the snowball in hell. sad the NRA's priority is profits for gun mfgs vice protecting our children. sadder still is that our legs allow the NRA to bully them...thus the legs as well put gun mfgs' profits over protection of our children...
So why not such a tax in some amount to cover the impositions that can be created by firearms? After all, most firearm deaths are from accidental shootings. Wouldn't some type insurance on them be appropriate?
Wrong Reg, Mental health pt's have a long history of institutionalization. Only recently did mental health rights for refusal of treatment lead to to days treatment. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7333723 and this book which discusses mandatory institutionalization and the rights movement that followed in the 1950's Stroman, Duane. 2003. “The Disability Rights Movement: From Deinstitutionalization to Self-determination. University Press of America
I agree with you, except that we are much worse than hitler, in that we have convinced americans that killing millions of our own unborn babies is OK (most of them african american) and we are now discussing how to restrict gun ownership among ourselves as being a prudent way to discourage criminals from committing gun crimes, instead of discussing how we can use guns , in turn, to protect ourselves, our families and our property from people that choose not to obey the law.
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/011713-641110-california-state-budget-not-balanced-despite-governor.htm