The America Civil Liberties Union loves to defend some civil liberties. Other civil liberties, like the Second Amendment's protections, tend to feel the ACLU's bus tires rolling over it. Continuing that trend, radical ACLU "senior policy advocate" Harold Jordan wrote an op-ed for the Pittsburg Post-Gazette advocating disarmed cops work in the city's public schools.
The piece, since posted on the ACLU's national website, appeals to feelings and emotions, not science and logic.
Don’t arm school police
…The most immediate impact of arming school police would be felt by students… Having officers patrol the hallways with firearms sends a negative message to students. It makes many students feel that they are being treated like suspects. It can have an intimidating presence and can contribute to negative attitudes about police, in general.
Jordan carefully crafts strawmen to support his tenuous position:
There is no evidence that arming school officers increases overall safety or improves relationships within school communities. Having an armed officer stationed in schools has neither prevented nor stopped “active shooter” incidents. It did not at Columbine High School nor has it elsewhere.
Really now? Dear Harold: Your strawman is on fire. Armed SRO’s did indeed stop a school shooter. And here. And here. And here. Oops. Damn truth!
Unarmed school staff does not mean that schools are defenseless in emergency situations.
You mean unarmed school staff like those in Sandy Hook, Harold? The families of 26 dead students and staff might argue how well unarmed school staff works to stop a mentally deranged misfit intent on racking up a new spree killing high score.
He winds down to a close appealing to – you guessed it – feelings and emotions. He also adds in a pinch of peer pressure.
Forward-thinking districts are reconsidering the kinds of support staff that work in schools, not whether they should be armed.
America has had enough "forward thinking" during the eight years of the Obama administration. Under Obama's first seven years, the USA suffered through more spree killings with eight or more fatalities than the previous four administrations combined.
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- A table of boys watches as Greeley police Officer Erin Brady shows off her muscles during her visit to Heath Middle School earlier this month. Brady has become friends with many of the students she visits at Heath. Caption by Greeley Tribune.
How radical is the ACLU's Harold Jordan's position? Extremist enough that even the liberal-leaning (cough!) Pittsburg Post-Gazette wants no part of it.
Arm the officers: City school police should be able to carry guns
Police officers employed by the Pittsburgh Public Schools have the same arrest powers and receive the same training as their counterparts in municipal police departments. The big difference is, the school district’s police officers don’t carry guns. It’s time for that to change.
…The police officers are unarmed even though they work in environments where weapons sometimes are found and violence sometimes erupts. There also is the threat of schools being attacked from the outside or of street violence spilling onto school property. Municipal police officers wouldn’t be asked to face on-the-job risks without weapons; school police officers shouldn’t be asked to do so, either. Aaron Vanatta, a Quaker Valley School District police officer and Region 3 director for the National Association of School Resource Officers, put it this way: Police officers without guns are like “firefighters without any hoses. What’s the sense?”
…Arming the school police wouldn’t be a rash act putting students, teachers and other employees at risk. With proper oversight, the measure would enhance safety rather than diminish it.
Even the teacher's union recognizes the risks to policing in schools, noting the absurdity of disarmed police officers.
In the end, the ACLU and its Harold Jordan continue their existence on an island of absurdity. Their selective righteousness when it comes to civil liberties proves them partisan hypocrites, not noble advocates for the oppressed.
Police in schools is itself sometimes a problem in that the school administration is frequently using police to farm out behaviour enforcement. Discipline issues that are better handled internally by a principal or dean are now being handled by police and children are getting criminal records for petty issues. Along with zero tolerance policies, kids are growing up in an inflexible authoritarian system that stifles freedom and individuality. If a school decides that their police shouldn't be armed, what they really need to understand is that they don't need police in their school.
However, if a school is in such a dangerous situation that police are needed for security, then of course they should be armed. Having police in a school shouldn't be some simple-minded half-measure.
I'm an old guy i grew up in the deep south in an era when there were a lot of guns on our school campus and they all stayed behind the seat of the pickup trucks that carried them and somehow nobody was frighten and occasionaly there was a LEO on campus but no SRO's and i never heard a sudden say they felt like a suspect, but i can understand why they would feel that way, most of the time it would be because they had a reason to feel that way. Not everyone held the LEO's in high esteem, i remember one youngman attend our school who had been thrownout of the other high school in town, call a FHP officer there visiting a drivers edcucation, a PIG, in one quick motion out came the cuffs one end on the wrist the other end on a handrail along the sidewalk, and later he was a different youngman, a humble youngman, embarassed to say the least, and actually grewup without any trauma from it and the best thing i can he didn't become an ACLU lawyer. Oh those where the good days when good guys did have guns at school and "forward thinking" was left to after graduation and now evil is lurking, yes at school also and have folks who think forward and hope thats enough to keep our students safe, it's time to "think back" .
I want to point out that the police officer in your story responded with physical force to a person who was merely speaking. That is authoritarianism and it's exactly what is happening in many schools now. Only now, things can be even worse. Many petty issues like that would have in the past been handled with being kept after school or some sort of service around the school (e.g. picking up trash, etc) are now being handled with handcuffs and criminal records. Which is absurd.
Discipline in schools should be handled by school officials. Instead, schools with "Resource Officers" are frequently farming out that responsibility with disasterous consequences. I'm glad things worked out all right for the classmate in your story, but it doesn't always work out that well in our current environment.
Disarm the security around the ACLU's advocates, not my local school resource officers.
Read chris bird's How to survive a mass killer shooting. The only thing that saves lives in these situations is armed citizens and rapidly responding police. Having armed guards in schools makes them safer, especially in bs places like illinois, where schools are declared gun free zones .