Shotgun-Toting Police and Schools

The Los Angeles school board recently gave its blessing to a plan to equip its police force with 12-gauge shotguns. The school board thinks its officers need “more confidence” when patrolling campuses and responding to dangerous situations. While some of us are still wading through the muck passing for logic in such thinking, others are holding their collective breath waiting for the inevitable: an innocent student or bystander felled by a stray shotgun blast; shotguns stolen from vacant police vehicles by gangbangers hankering for prestige; lawsuits that drain the district’s purse; and accusations by an outraged public of ethnic-group targeting.

Most Angelenos and, especially, public school teachers are all too familiar with the dangers that lurk on our school campuses. But is this education-through-elimination fever going to instill decorous behavior in students or merely infect schools with fear and make them internment camps? Will the cure--increased school police confidence--be worse than the disease?

The guesstimate by the school district’s chief of police that his officers respond to reports of gunfire “two to three times a week” should have been evaluated and considered as anecdotal evidence only--not factual, researched evidence. The district’s police chief admitted that there were no written reports of the purported gunfire. Yet the school board, eager to take the chief at his word, approved his request.

There is no way of predicting what the human and financial costs of the school board’s ominous decision will be. Wouldn’t it be better if officer confidence were inspired through training, better performance and coaching? Bigger guns cannot replace the skill or brain power necessary to make wise decisions in tough times. The school district ought to have increased the size of its police force and deployed more officers throughout campuses and environs. How can the prospect of wrongful deaths, injuries and subsequent lawsuits be cheaper and preferable?

There is as much troubling about this decision as there is about the students whose dangerous, antisocial and unacceptable behavior it is targeting. Force only breeds more force. But education instills understanding. Schools are intended to be safe havens for cultivating intelligence and appropriate behavioral responses.

The community should view the school board’s decision as a wake-up call. If dangerous, nonconforming students are to be saved rather than shot, every household, house of worship and community-based organization needs to get involved in teaching and counseling our youth and providing them with lifestyle options.

If we can do that, the true heroes will be the communtiy, not the school officers searching for their confidence behind raised 12-gauge shotguns.