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Jae C. Hong / AP file
School police Sgt. Kevin Philips checks out a rifle from the police armory in Santa Ana, Calif., on Jan. 24. Officials in this Los Angeles-area city say the high-powered weapons now in the hands of school police could prevent a massacre.
In post-Newtown America, those with power say they must act to prevent another massacre of innocents.
The Obama administration wants stiffer gun control, and $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 more on-campus police or counselors, or purchase security technology. State legislators are considering shifting millions of dollars around to help schools hire more police. Some locals aren’t waiting: The 5,500-resident town of Jordan, Minn., has moved its entire eight-officer police force into schools.
“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said after a young man shot his way into his former grammar school on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 first-graders and six educators.
With the new year, the NRA has been flexing its political muscle, lobbying states not just to hire more school police — under the group’s National School Shield project — but also to pass laws allowing teachers or other staff to bring licensed guns to school to defend their students and themselves.
After Newtown, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, was an early supporter of federal aid to hire more school police.“If a school district wants to have a community policing presence, I think it’s very important they have it,” Boxer told the Washington Post.
Beyond the headlines, though, the push for more cops or other armed security personnel in schools is running headlong into another movement that’s been quietly growing in states as diverse as Mississippi, New York, Utah, Texas and California.
It’s a push to get police out of schools, or at least to end their involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.
Civil-rights groups and juvenile court judges — and even some officials within the Obama administration — argue that because the ranks of police began growing in schools in the late 1990s, the criminal justice system’s involvement in student discipline has gotten entirely out of hand in some communities. That has put students, especially ethnic minorities, on a path to failure, they say — the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.
In Los Angeles, for example, scores of students, most Latino or black and many just 11 or 12 years old, have been ticketed by school officers for minor infractions often categorized as disturbing the peace. In Austin, Texas, a 12-year-old was forced to court for spraying on perfume in class. In DeSoto County, Miss. officers and a school district were sued after a bus surveillance video — seen in part by a reporter — revealed officers unjustifiably arresting black students, the suit alleged, and threatening others with a “a bullet between the eyes.”
Optimists — Education Secretary Arne Duncan among them — say cops in schools are not an either/or proposition: Careful training, they say, will ensure that school police deployed in the wake of Newtown protect, rather than intimidate, students.
But many civil-rights advocates are worried. They say plenty of cities and states are only beginning to come to grips with allegations that schools, and school-based police, have unjustifiably sent students into the criminal-justice system.
A push for security
Police presence in schools has been growing for years. The number of full-time city police officers assigned to schools increased nearly 40 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to the U.S. Justice Department. One infamous incident fueling that rise was the 1999 massacre of 12 students and a teacher by two students at Columbine High School in suburban Denver.
After Newtown, though, an intense new round of calls for more cops in schools has echoed through small towns and big cities nationwide.
The state legislative delegation of Broward County, Fla., for example, quickly approved a proposal in January — it must now be approved by state legislators — that could allow increases in property taxes in Broward to pay for more school police, at an annual cost of up to $130,000 per officer.
The National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan research group, told the Center for Public Integrity that in February it began tracking a flurry of school-security legislation in more than 20 states.
Since January, two school-security bills in Mississippi, publicly backed by NRA representatives, have been moving fast through the Statehouse.
One bill would set up a $7.5 million school-security fund to offer Mississippi schools $10,000 matching grants to hire police. The other bill, which Mississippi’s House of Representatives approved Feb. 13, would allow districts to designate teachers or other school staff to act as a secret defense force in the event of an attack. Volunteers would take their own licensed, concealed weapons to school. The House rejected a proposal to require psychological evaluations of those designated by districts.
Alabama legislators are considering creating a lottery to pay for a $20 million plan to put police officers in every school. Indiana lawmakers are weighing a proposal to set aside $10 million to offer grants to schools to hire local police to post in schools. States where legislators have introduced proposals to allow designated teachers or other school staff to be armed include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Texas and Utah already allow licensed gun owners to take weapons onto campuses under certain circumstances. Legislators in those states are discussing ideas for supporting school staff who want to have weapons at school for defense.
The NRA isn’t alone in trying to influence the debate. The Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, or NASRO, is pushing for more law enforcement in schools. NASRO opposes arming teachers.
Stung by criticism of resource officers, the nonprofit NASRO vigorously disputes the idea that a school-to-prison pipeline is pervasive. In “To Protect and Educate,” a report issued last October, NASRO said: “Attacks against the school resource officer are superficial and polemical.”
On a Facebook page, NASRO has posted multiple news reports about school resource officers foiling violent acts by students.
Kevin Quinn, president of NASRO, said in an interview that NASRO regards cases of abuses by school police to be isolated. “The No. 1 way to combat that is training,” said Quinn, a school resource officer in the Phoenix area.
Quinn agreed with civil rights advocates that some school districts have become too reliant on police to enforce discipline. Over the last decade, more schools have adopted “zero tolerance” polices, not just for guns or other weapons or drugs, but for behavior that’s seen as disorderly or defiant.
“The problem,” Quinn said, “is the school at times says, ‘Oh, we’ve got a cop. Let him take care of things.’”
Out of hand?
Chief Juvenile Court Judge Steven Teske, of Clayton County, Ga., is not against police in schools, but firmly believes that a school-to-prison pipeline exists.
When Teske took the bench in 1999 in his Atlanta suburb, which is 66 percent black, one-third of the cases in his court were kids referred from schools. By 2004, he said, 92 percent of the 1,400 cases in his court came from schools, mostly for alleged disruption and disorderly conduct.
Lt. Francisco Romero, Clayton’s school resource officer at the time, told the Center for Public Integrity that he was disturbed to discover that one year he arrested more people — students — than any other officer in Clayton.
Fed up, Teske called together school and police leaders and hammered out a protocol requiring counseling and clear warnings before students were sent to court. Teske credits the protocol with improving relationships between students and police, and driving down juvenile felonies by 51 percent and increasing graduation rates by 24 percent.
“If police are placed on campus without written protocols defining their role, the results will be disastrous — just as removing existing police from campus can have unintended consequences,” Teske wrote in the publication Youth Today after the Newtown killings.
Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a national civil-rights group urging discipline reforms, said that after the 1999 Columbine shootings, police citations of students in the city of Denver skyrocketed. Student referrals to police increased by 71 percent between 2000 and 2004. Only 7 percent of referrals to law enforcement from Denver’s schools, whose students are mostly nonwhite, were for serious offenses such as carrying a weapon.
In February, Denver school and police officials signed an agreement that obliges school police to “de-escalate” conflicts, attend training sessions on child psychology and embrace “restorative justice,” which requires students to sit down and resolve problems outside the criminal court system.
Dianis, whose group collaborated on the Denver agreement, hopes Denver’s decision influences other jurisdictions as they weigh putting more police in schools.
In Los Angeles — home to the country’s largest school police force — school leaders, judges, police and civil-rights activists have been holding a series of meetings to work toward a protocol for student citations and arrests.
The Center for Public Integrity analyzed Los Angeles Unified School District Police records and found that from 2009 through 2011, officers issued about 10,000 tickets a year to students, mostly in low-income neighborhoods.
More than 40 percent of citations, the Center also found, went to students 14 or younger in schools that parents said were more heavily policed. Juvenile court judges complained about a parade of children in court for infractions better dealt with at school.
Reconciling such findings with current security concerns is difficult, concedes Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program. Parker said it sounds “callous” to protest placing more police in schools after Newtown, a town that immediately after the December massacre assigned officers to guard schools.
But one of the ACLU’s high-profile lawsuits involving schools right now accuses New York City police — whose ranks have grown in schools by 73 percent since 1998 — of violating students’ rights by using excessive force, handcuffing and arrests in response to infractions such as drawing on a desk.
“It’s very likely that officers dealing with children in Newtown will deal with them differently than children in Harlem,” Parker said. “It is likely to be more of an ‘Officer Joe, your friend,’ who is there than someone who tells you to stand up against a wall and spread your legs.”
New York City police administrators insist that officers have lowered crime in schools and say that the ACLU “talks about arrests in schools but, conveniently, not crimes.”
On Dec. 13, the day before the Newtown killings, Parker’s Racial Justice Program filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of ethnic-minority students allegedly rounded up by police in December 2010 at West High School in Salt Lake City.
The school district and the Salt Lake City police said they could not comment, because of a policy not to discuss pending litigation.
The ACLU suit alleges that plaintiff Kevin Winston’s son, Kaleb, was 14 when two plainclothes officers ushered the student, who is half-black, into a room and falsely accused him of gang membership and graffiti, or “tagging.”
An officer allegedly grabbed Kaleb’s arm, told him, “Quit acting tough,” and searched his backpack. The suit claims that officers forced Kaleb, who has no juvenile record, to pose for a photo — to put in a gang database — holding a sign with his name and the word “tagger” on it.
After he was released, the lawsuit alleges, Kaleb was shaken, called his parents and asked to go home. The suit alleges that when Lisa Winston, his mother, protested what had happened officers told her the sweep was done because of “a problem with the Mexicans.”
On March 1, the Salt Lake defendants filed a court document admitting that police had entered the school and questioned students. But in the documents, they denied the officers "acted unconstitutionally" or were targeting “Mexicans.”
In February, a similar suit filed by the ACLU of Southern California in 2011 was partially settled on behalf of 56 students at Hoover High School in Glendale, Calif., near Los Angeles. The agreement does not contain an admission of wrongdoing, the Associated Press reported.
The suit said that school administrators and Glendale police interrogated Latino and other minority students, and made them pose for mock mug shots.
Glendale police Sgt. Thomas Lorenz told the AP that the actions were an attempt to educate students on the peril of gangs. He denied that officers’ methods amounted to racial profiling.
“I’ve never been in trouble, and it was confusing, terrifying and humiliating,” Ashley Flores, who was 16 when the incident happened.
The settlement requires Glendale police and school officials to notify parents if students are to be questioned on campus. To ensure that officers uphold students’ rights, they will be trained to avoid racial profiling.
Walking the line
Michael Nash, presiding juvenile court judge in Los Angeles County, said in an interview that it’s hard to argue against placing police in schools — if they stay out of discipline matters.
As president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Nash sent a strongly worded letter to the Obama administration on Jan. 15, responding to the administration’s call for ideas on school safety.
“Research shows that aggressive security measures produce alienation and mistrust among students, which, in turn, can disrupt the learning environment,” the letter said. “Such restrictive environments may actually lead to violence, thus jeopardizing, instead of promoting, school safety.”
A student’s odds of dropping out of high school quadruple with a first-time court appearance, Nash wrote. Last summer, the judges’ council began a national campaign “to support school engagement and reduce school expulsion.” Putting more armed personnel into schools, Nash said, could prove “counterproductive” to this effort.
On Jan. 16, the White House announced it would seek congressional authorization for a $385 million school violence prevention package for fiscal year 2014.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the president’s proposals would go to appropriate committees. A Washington Post poll in January suggested that the recommendation for hiring more school police would face little opposition. The poll found that 55 percent of the public would even support a law to put an armed guard in every school.
A centerpiece of the White House proposal is the request for $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 new police. But in nod to concerns like Nash’s, schools could also use grants to hire counselors and school psychologists.
The administration also proposes $50 million to help 8,000 schools create safer and more “nurturing” atmospheres at schools. Another $25 million would be used to help schools struggling with “pervasive violence,” and $30 million would be for one-time grants for states to help schools develop emergency plans.
A total of $130 million would be for helping schools adopt conflict-resolution programs and improving early detection of student mental health problems.
In a January media call, Education secretary Duncan was asked to respond to concerns that more police would lead to misguided crackdowns on students.
“There’s no reason why additional school resources have to drive up the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline,” Duncan said. “Execution is really important — taking time train people in a really thoughtful way.” The Department of Justice, he said, will be in on that training.
Duncan is no stranger to controversy over school discipline.
Between 2009 and 2012, the Department of Education launched more than 20 investigations into allegations in school districts that minority students were punished more harshly than white pupils for the same violations of school rules. Duncan’s department aims to amicably reach agreements with districts to change discipline practices. Last year, the department also released an unprecedented analysis of national school data showing that black students, 18 percent of the sample, represented 42 percent of students referred to law enforcement.
These issues have been aired in two Congressional hearings since December.
In a February appearance before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, NASRO’s executive director, Mo Canady said the role of school resource officers is as “a trusted adult that a student can come to for information, for guidance.” He also said officers should leave “formal discipline” to educators.
Searching for balance
In Texas, police involvement in routine school discipline is a hot topic.
On Feb. 20, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Youth Law Center filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint is based on citation records showing that black students in the Bryan Independent School District, 100 miles north of Houston, are given municipal court summonses in numbers far greater than the proportion of school enrollment they represent.
Black students represent almost 22 percent of the 15,500-pupil Bryan district but were given more than half of all Class C misdemeanor tickets issued to students for “disruption of class” and “disorderly conduct,” according to the complaint. The complaint also says that staff of Texas Appleseed, a public-interest law group, observed Bryan students in court, including a 13-year-old whose teacher overheard him use profanity before class started and sent him to the principal, who, in turn, asked an officer to issue a ticket.
In a statement, the Bryan district said it would welcome “a dialogue” with federal education investigators. The citation numbers alleged in the complaint “were certainly no surprise to us, and we have been proactive in taking measures to address the issue,” the district said. “We hope the measures we are taking to support our minority students will result in a more positive outcome.”
Texas state Democratic Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, says it’s time to stop these tickets, which can cost families hundreds of dollars and end up creating a criminal record for the student.
He said legislators will have to search for a balance between security and smart use of school police. The Houston Democrat hopes to pass a bill this year to stop ticketing for basic misbehavior, and require alternatives for students before schools send them to court.
It used to be a “comforting” to see a police officer at school, Whitmire said. Then cash-strapped schools shed counselors, police stepped in as enforcers, and Texas courts, he said, began to expect revenue from student tickets.
“These police departments have grown and grown, and they have to justify their budgets,” Whitmire added. “They’ve even asked for legislation to be able to go (do enforcement) outside schools.”
But in response to Newtown, Whitmire is co-sponsoring another proposal with state Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands, to allow districts to try to raise taxes or other revenue to hire more school police or buy security technology.
He’d prefer adding police to arming teachers, Whitmire said, but he’ll “make damn sure,” he said, that more police doesn’t lead to more tickets.
Mississippi state Democratic Rep. John Hines Sr. is concerned about safety, too. But he’s also trying to get fellow legislators more interested in allegations of a school-to-prison pipeline in his state.
In January, Hines, who chairs the House Youth and Family Affairs Committee, held a state public hearing to discuss the “Handcuffs on Success” report issued that month by the Advancement Project, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse.
The report notes that the Jackson Public Schools District was sued in 2011 in connection to allegations that its students were handcuffed to railings for dress-code violations or refusing to do their schoolwork. Without admitting wrongdoing, the district settled the suit last May with an agreement to stop handcuffing children younger than 13, and to only handcuff older students when they are accused of a crime. A review of Jackson police records shows, according to “Handcuffs on Success,” that 96 percent of student arrests at schools in 2010-11 were for misdemeanors, most for disorderly conduct. Only 4 percent were for suspected felonies.
Hines said he’s also troubled by a lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice filed last October against Meridian, Miss, alleging that students there “are regularly and repeatedly handcuffed and arrested in school and incarcerated for days at a time without a probable cause hearing.”
“I want kids safe,” Hines said. “I don’t want people coming off the street or an enraged child shooting people. But I don’t want lots of people all strapped up with guns at our schools either.”
The Meridian Public School District is among the defendants in the DOJ suit, which was filed against the city, the county of Lauderdale and judicial officials as well as the state of Mississippi. School Superintendent Alvin Taylor has said he's working cooperatively with federal investigators but has declined to elaborate.
In its lawsuit, the Department of Justice noted that Meridian officials sent a letter in September, before the lawsuit was filed, claiming that allegations of violations were "moot" because the city had changed how police officers were to respond to requests from schools for assistance in dealing with a student. The Department of Justice's lawsuit asserts that such changes are not a "permanent" remedy to the allegations of violations of student rights.
Also in Mississippi, police officers, the school district and employees named in a lawsuit triggered by the bus surveillance video showing officers arresting and threatening black students either denied wrongdoing or knowledge of some of the alleged events. By August the defendants had reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs, who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Republican Lester “Bubba” Carpenter, who also serves in Mississippi’s House, is sponsoring the proposal to allow districts to designate teachers or employees as a secret “marshals” with permission to bring their own licensed, concealed weapons to school.
Mississippi is a “pretty poor state,” Carpenter said, so the idea is cost-effective. He’s not worried that teachers will panic and shoot in haste.
“I think they’re smart enough individuals,” Carpenter said. “We trust them with our children every day.”
But Carpenter also supports the proposal to set aside $7.5 million so that schools can apply for $10,000 matching grants to hire police officers.
“I’ll vote for both of them,” Carpenter said of the proposals. “You can’t get enough security at schools.”
Carpenter said he wasn’t that familiar with the allegations of police excesses alleged in the ACLU and U.S Justice Department lawsuits, or the “Handcuffs on Success” report.
“You’re always going to have a bad apple,” he said.
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org.
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so again instead of fixing the problem, lets just throw even more money at it, bad enough our education ranking is dropping in every catergory, but now let's add extra police officers to the mix, and along with it more property taxes. Training a few teachers to use and handle guns and maybe carry them will be about as effective and you don't have to pay them more.
I mean let's look at how many kids actually die every year to gun violence in school? How many is it? I have no idea.
Although I've got a better idea, how about we take that money along with the liberal PC crap that they've been feeding kids since oh I don't know 1990!!! About the same time kids seem to have gotten out of control, let's parents spank their own kids and discipline them, and spend that money on parenting classes, because let's be honest parents are horrible these days, you see it everywhere you go kids run amuck. Jeez when did kids really start killing other kids in school, when the gov't started trying to force into whatever type of slave/worker zombie they are trying to manufacture us and our kids into.
How's that working out for ya, we are not a species that is suited for this kind of crap and never will be, the more you force it the worse it's going to get.
Criminy, gomer, hows about joining us in the 21st Century?
These idiotz who just want to throw guns at the problem ARE THE PROBLEM!!
Outlaw the frickin' guns and ammo that let some reject kill 100 kids in 3 minutes... It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, Einsteins.... SHeesh!!
I grew up in Santa Ana in the 70's; cops, gangs, and guns are the landscape once you get away from the mall there. If you mind your own and be respectful there's no problem; people get along and it's business as usual. Cops were always at my school because of the diverse population. The truth is that nothing new is being reported here. Security in the form of an armed police presence was always the way there. Their just letting you know what they're packing these days is all.
"Outlaw the frickin' guns and ammo that let some reject kill 100 kids in 3 minutes... It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, Einsteins.... SHeesh!!"
Well while you`re throwing out the Einstein card you may want to get with a few other catch phrases like "Where there`s a will there`s a way" and "Fight fire with fire"
Outlawing the guns doesn`t do a damn thing about solving evil intent, but a cop in the school will stop that evil doer from acting on his impulses. When`s the last time you heard of a mass shooting in a police station, an airport, or at a football game??
When are you "Einsteins" going to get that through your heads...sheesh!
The problem with a cop in every school is that when you bar all the entrances except one, when a fire breaks out, all the kids perish in the fire. One cop cannot guard an entire school. If you ban automatic weapons, every time the police come upon one, they take it off the street until they are so expensive and hard to get, they are very rare. Border checks and strict import bans on the manufacturers and felony sentences when you are caught with conversion kits do most of the work for you.
"Sandy-3553979
The problem with a cop in every school is that when you bar all the entrances except one, when a fire breaks out, all the kids perish in the fire"
Really? What do you think they do, chain the doors from the outside? LMAO!!
"One cop cannot guard an entire school."
One cop is better than no cop...c`mon, is this all you`ve got?
Try harder, LMAO!!
Sandy,
When school doors are locked, they are designed to always open from the inside for fire safety. That's what that push bar on the inside is for.
automatic weapons are already banned. An automatic weapon is a machine gun. Legally owned or possessed by the military, law enforcement, and gun dealers only.
Seems like you need to do a lot more homework before you comment so you don't come across as just another ignorant liberal
I agree instead of letting parents and teachers being able to go back to discipline in the schools at a young age you nuts are willing to leave it up to gun carrying officers who are doing such a great job of crime fighting out in the real world (thats right they're going to get it right in the schools?). Puleeze when are we going to grow up and join the rest of the industrialized world so that WE to can have stats like say britain-35 gun deaths in 2011(they seem to be bearing up just fine with hunting rifles and hand guns) instead of our stats--11,000+ gun deaths in 2011- guess we'll show those limey's-riighhhhtttt?
We need nuclear armed site administrators to deter violence.
We are really becoming more and more a police state. When will there be border checks at each state border where the special police ask you for your papers. This isn't about protecting our children. It is about getting them used to being controlled and regulated.
I think this could work very well for us in the end.
Federal law prohibits convicted felons from buying or having fire arms, especially hand guns.
If police officers are in schools and a lot of teenage students are being arrested and charged with crimes, we can make a lot of those crimes felonies if they're not already and the beauty of it will be that we'll have many thousands of young people who are felons before they're even old enough to buy a gun in the first place. This will greatly decrease the number of hand guns in circulation.
Better still, we could make felonies out of what are now misdemeanors such as jaywalking and shop lifting. The sentences handed down could just be suspended prison sentences and probation, but the important thing is that a lot more people would be barred from purchasing guns because of it.
davey, the next time you feel the need to make a comment, fight the urge.
An armed police officer might also bring a bit more safety to students from acts of violence, help teachers maintain order in the class rooms. It is definitely a deterrent.
Maybe teachers won't freak out so much when a student makes a gun shaped pop tart.
There is absolutely no logic to those who desire this so-called gun control. THOUSANDS of gun laws on the books; Adding "just one more law" is the answer when NONE have EVER stopped a criminal from committing a crime; Thinking that "the government is supposed to protect us"; And attack the RIGHTS of LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS is the freaking solution?!?!?! Then they have the audacity to call it "Common Sense" legislation?!?!?! I think Bill Cosby's line about children applies to these people: "BRAIN DAMAGED!"
It isn't about hunting. It isn't about having fun shooting targets. It isn't about "perceived paranoia" about getting attacked. It IS about Individual freedom to protect ones self and family against real threats from criminals, and "invaders, both foreign AND domestic"...
With all of this nonsense, I am thoroughly convinced that someone has taken a @!$%# in the gene-pool...
Since 1980, 297 People Have Been Killed in School Shootings
According to the data, there have been a total of 137 fatal school shootings that killed 297 victims since 1980. Elementary schools saw the fewest shootings (17), while high schools saw the most (62). Each decade had more shooting deaths.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/12/sandy_hook_a_chart_of_all_196_fatal_school_shootings_since_1980_map.html
Google - Gun Town USA...
30+years ago a town, now 30k population, passed an ordnance requiring ALL households to own and maintain a GUN. There are exceptions; felons, handicapped, etc...
During these 30+years there have been 2-gun related homicides in this town. They were BOTH in a 'Gun FREE' school zone, State & Federal laws over-rode the town ordnance...
When a criminal is faced with the possibility of an ARMED Victim, he will choose another target...
Thailand 8+Years ago was experiencing school burnings and people threatening the teachers & students. The Queen authorized town Leaders and School teachers to be provided with guns/training. This was after the POLICE/Military school guards proved to be ineffective...
The attackers switched from attacking the schools to attacking the Teachers going to work/home. This resulted in MORE POLICE/Military escorts...
The attackers are now using road side bombs and direct attacks on the Military Camps. So they can procure MORE GUNS. Now on average 4+people a day are being KILLED...
As you add more GUNS to the mix - the criminals escalate the VIOLENCE. You have to change the criminals options, by ENFORCING the existing LAWS...
FORCE your Judges & DAs to follow the Federal Guidelines for crimes committed with a GUN...
Ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. That is a good start. Most security guards will be so bored they will not be ready for the assault.
Hagg, taken...
Notice how your post always gets collapsed? It's by the "Einstein Community"...
There lies the problem. You say "Einsteins". Criminals are not Einsteins. All "US" Einsteins will listen but the criminals won't.
Rendering "US" Einsteins defenseless.
How many times do we have to tell you and your posse,.....look at banning drugs or anything else. It doesn't work.
This story is "proof" that even the lawmakers know this and this is why they want police protecttion in schools.
Anything clicking in your head yet?! SHeesh!
taken,
Nice to see you're saying High Capacity Mags and Assault weapons. That one I can agree on. Not Hand-Guns.
@Haggassburro the whiner, no ones throwing guns at any problems you fear mongering idiot (stuff your 100 kids in 3 min. B.S.)! Your obviously not from this century, country, or planet if think for one minute all of our (America's) woes will go away with some contrived fandango dream law.
Why don't you just admit that your a foreign interloper bent on disarming America? I'm hoping you're an ex patriot hater because that would put you on a drone visit list. Crawl back under the rock from whence you came it's probably already circling above you Einstein (NOT)!
Citizen Frank#2....respectfully I really find your argument sick. Starters...do your homework before spewing opinion. Start by looking at Chicago. Chicago public schools have armed police officers in schools with a sizeable number having metal doors. You would think this would deter gun violence by having armed police present. WRONG! Kids are being shot daily outside city schools at an alarming rate. Most schools have metal detectors at one entrance that every student must pass through. Kids very young and teens are the targets regardless of armed police. Chicago this year so far is averaging 2 kids killed a day in their city that's not including the total number of shootings.
My daughter is a teacher last year she taught a class of 8th graders in an elementary school. The school is 4 doors down from the village police station and district court house. An 8th grader came to school wearing a long dark coat in class. HE HAD A GUN UNDER HIS COAT AND WAS PREPARED TO SHOOT ANOTHER STUDENT AS SOON AS HE SAW HIM. A TEACHER confronted this student and when she did he displayed his gun. He was finally apprehended inside the school arrested and taken to the police station nearby. He was out on bond the next day and expelled pending a hearing however the kid he was seeking nailed him.
I know people who are teachers, military members, police officers and EMT's and they all have the same position. You can put as many armed police officers in a school as you want. But at the end of the day a kid/adult with a semi-automatic will do more harm and achieve their goal before a lone police officer can have any effect. Another daughter was held up while working in a bank in a "hostile take over," with a gun held to her head. Three men entered the bank with guns while a get a way car was waiting. HER BANK HAD NO POLICE ON DUTY. The workers were so tarumatized from the experience several quit. REALITY the bank hired a security guard an off duty police officer for the duration of six months after that they no longer had security. So anyone who argues that banks etc. always have police guards and never are robbed think again. Our state has had a spike in robberies in the past three years including brazen bank robberies,
I don't believe in 'DISARMING AMERICA," but I do strongly support common sense 'REGULATION,' TO PROTECT THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY FROM THE FEW WHO MANAGE TO DO THE MOST HARM IN THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME for whatever reason. We have lost too many innocent children to make such blanket statements. Before you make a comment do the homework and see just how terrible these losses are at home not on any battle field for any justifiable reason or logical purpose.
You might be interested to know that many military elite Generals, Admirals, etc. who have served in many theaters of war agree on one thing. Semi automatics have no recreational use and are designed for the sole purpose of war. Such guns serve no real purpose in civility and can do immense harm to citizens in a peaceful society. Because of their experience they are petitioning and urging the public to support they be banned. No one is taking ALL YOUR GUNS or DISARMING ANYONE what they are doing is attempting to regulate and prevent innocent people from being KILLED.
Uh-oh, all you Liberal sh-t-heads !!
You mean to tell me that more and more school systems agree with the NRA's LaPierre ??
Even in California ?? Go smoke a joint - you'll feel better - at least for a while. LMFAO !!!!!!
HERE is what will STOP school massacres:
1. Create a GUN FREE ZONE at the school, thereby letting every would be killer know nobody will shoot back.
2. Disarm all the teachers, and law abiding citizens, and let every would be killer know that too.
3. When somebody shoots up a school and kills a bunch of kids, be a total dumb ass and blame the NRA.
Oldtime,
That is great, love it. With the school a "gun free zone" it will be safe until some dick head comes in and starts shooting up the place,,,,,, then the school will call someone with a gun to help them..
Love your post,"" When somebody shoots up a school and kills a bunch of kids, be a total dumb ass and blame the NRA.""
I think Oldtime was being sarcastic...but maybe that's just me.
Deputy Don,,,,, I was sure he was being sarcastic.
We do not need thugs with badges in schools, what we need are well trained people to handle our children. Get the thugs out.
Like parents?
Are any of these policemen volunteering for duty in our schools? Just wondering. Our kids are not getting any music, science, any decent art education, and now you're trying to take money out of the school budget to pay policemen to guard our kids so you NRA yahoos can continue to carry automatic weapons? I don't buy it. If you NRA people think cops should be in our schools to protect our kids from you crazy people, maybe you NRA people should take up a collection within your own organization and within the gun manufacturer professional organizations to pay for police protection since you are all so sure people should have automatic weapons. I don't see anything in the second amendment that says you have a right to bear them. Why don't you bear the cost, then? Why should those who oppose them? I just don't see it? A policeman in every school? Why not? why not one in every classroom at your expense? If that increases the cost of your AK-47 to 1,000,000 per gun, then you still have the right to buy one, don't you?
You are a nut.
Sandy - Only problem with your argument is that automatic weapons have effectively been banned since 1934. While it's not illegal to possess one, it's quite difficult (and expensive) to do so. And I haven't heard any "NRA yahoos" suggesting that should be changed.
P.S. - Name-calling is rarely an effective way to bolster a rational defense of your position.
I completely agree, Sandy! While I am paying for my right to keep and bear arms, how about you pay fully for the privilege of your children's education? Why should those who either do not have or do not want children pay for the education of others? You pay for your schools alone, then you can protect your children however you like, or not, or whatever. I don't see anywhere in the constitution anything about a right to education, let alone anything requiring all citizens to pay child support. Better yet, lets pass a law that charges you $50.00 a word to exercise your First Amendment rights. Call it a "Inane Babble Tax", or whatever. You'll still have access to your freedom of speech, no? Why shouldn't you have to pay to exercise your rights?
I've said it before, I'll keep saying it until people like you understand. You can make all kinds of laws to make it illegal to hurt or kill anyone in any foreseeable way. If someone does not have the morality to tell them it is wrong to hurt or kill, then a piece of paper covered in words is not going to stop them. The only thing excess legislation will do is take away the freedom of moral, law abiding citizens, and make more criminals.
Sandy,, you need to learn about guns and existing laws, until you do you should not make statements that prove you are lacking in the area of good information and common sense.
sandy your ignorance is showing again go back to your bong automatic weapons IE machine guns are illegal and us "gun nuts" respect laws we just carry a gun and unlike you will not be a victim thanx and have an awesome day or w/e you idiots have
NO police officers should be allowed in schools...sounds like Nazi Germany...the nerve of Bush...next thing
he will be sending drones over American cities, and allowing the killing of American citizens...those teachers
can throw erasers at the killers....this is all the NRA's fault.
Love your posts,,,good humor and spot on.
IF Obama REALLY wants to solve this problem, he will outlaw guns at schools, create gun free zones, and
make sure every homicidal maniac knows they will be arrested if they shoot up a school.
I think homicidal maniacs will know they'll be arrested if they shoot up anything, that's kind of redundant. "Oh, you shot up a Laundromat? You're free to go..." Homocidal Maniacs don't live long enough to get arrested. Probably 98% of them take their own life in the process, if they're not sniped already.
We have compounded two separate issues here. On the one hand we have a response to an outside threat - gunman entering school and killing students; that was Newtown. That is what has prompted the police on campus legislation. This is an entirely different atmosphere and motivation than internal violence among students on school property during school hours. These really are apple and orange situations.
I don't believe Newtown parents are thinking the police are going to search their surviving children as they enter school each day. I don't believe they see a situation where the police are there in the roll of seeing student as anow or future criminal. I don't believe they see the police as routinely searching their child's backpack each day. They certainly don't believe that their 5 year old will end up in handcuffs because he left his squirt gun in his backpack and they forget to check after the weekend. They would never expect that.
The current (before Newtown) policing situation in schools is in schools with metal detectors screening the students not the grown-ups when they enter school. Where they search the kids, not the parents upon arrival, where the police are watching the kids not the stranger entering from the sidewalk. Schools where if the police heard the break-in (as in Newtown) they would perhaps assume it was an unarmed student that will be on their way to 'juvie' soon. They certainly would not be thinking that they are going to be confronting a fully armed equiped with kevlar outsider coming in with intent to kill any and every one including themselves. This is even true of schools much like Columbine that responded to fear of that fate for themselves put police in to do essentially the same as in the urban schools, but looking for malcontents or unusual or perhaps bullying behavior rather than urban criminals. The students are still who the police are watching and suspecting not the adult population outside.
Anecdotes and accusations, fears and loathings must not be allowed to confound these two different situations concening police in schools and what their roles are to be. Inner city schools have far diffenent problems than suburban or more exclusive communities do. If we have Police in schools we need to clearly state why they are there what is their role and purpose. To protect the children. But protect them from what, exactly.? One threat, many threats, each other, the teachers? Does one protection fit all situations? Is any scheme foolproof? Is it really true that the only way we can feel that our children are safe at school is with armed guards? That this is the best use of resources, and that we really want the children of America to associate school with police and the potential threat of violence against them by somebody. Really? This is the best we can do? I thought duck and cover was bad living with the eternal threat of MAD. But to grow up with school representing the place you are considered most likely to come to harm or violence is untenable.
How does a town putting all of its police officers in their schools protect anybody. Good gods. How can that make sense? Surely we can do better than this.
Thanks for putting up with my rant.
We have armed individuals guarding our money, sporting events, and nitwit celebrities like the Kardashians; but not our children. What kind of logic is that?
the kind of logic that says our kids shouldn't need to be in the middle of ARMED MEN AND WOMEN!!! WTF!
"kids shouldn't need to be in the middle of ARMED MEN AND WOMEN!!"
Why not? It's not a warm and fuzzy world out there any more (if it ever was), and the sooner the kids learn that, the better they'll be equipped to deal with it. We teach our kids to look both ways before crossing the street, to wear their seat belts, and what to do if there's a fire - TO KEEP THEM SAFE. We don't expect our children to put out the flames if the house catches fire because they're not equipped to do that. But we do teach them that there are people out there that are trained, properly equipped, and prepared to do what's needed to resolve the situation and keep them safe.
Or are you one of those that uses the cops as a threat to keep the kids in line?
this is insane. i don't raise my kids in the middle of a war zone ON PURPOSE JACKHOLES! I will not send my kids to a school that employs armed guards EVER. WTF?!
Home-schooling is the future apparently. And if I have to do that, I WILL NOT PAY the taxes that go to schools. Think I'm kidding?
You gun-toting wannabee FREAKS that think more guns are the answer should all go eff yourselves. You're pissing me off. You argue that Obama's kids go to a school that employs armed guards... guess what you mindless little freaks... he gets thousands of death threats every week (day?) - I would have my kids under protection too if that were the case for me. BUT I DON'T GET DEATH THREATS!!! IT'S NOT THE SAME!!!
GROW A BRAIN AND PUT DOWN THE BOTTLE FOLKS!!
Oh you will pay taxes & like it. Obama says that EVERYONE must pay their fair share. Don't make him send one of Holders Drones over your house.
i agree, Wow. i would NOT send my children to school with armed guards, either. if i wanted to live in that kind of country, i would move to Syria. or Iraq. or Iran. or......cuz there has NEVER been a case of a gun-toting unstable officer with a gun. how about the elementary school teacher in PA last December who went into church and shot and killed his ex-wife? is HE the teacher you want packing heat in his desk drawer JUST IN CASE? and what happens when a lunatic DOES enter the school with many weapons and tons of ammo (Lanza) and a few teachers are going to have piddly little handguns? it will be like the Wild Wild West in the halls of Smith Elementary school. Lord help us all!
He's a traitor, he deserves every threat he gets. Hoping Holders drone goes awol & lands on your house.
"I will not send my kids to a school that employs armed guards EVER."
Right - because God forbid your kids should grow up feeling safe, and know that they're being protected.
You know, I make it a point not to indulge in personal attacks. But in your case, I might be willing to make an exception.
WoW...thats funny..."Threatening" to Home school her kids and not pay taxes...
From the curriculum Ive seen, theyre BETTER off being home schooled... I know mine were.
wow i cant believe WHAT A GUTLESS FOOL YOU ARE! stand up for yourself and your family and quit relying on the guvment! some folks just dont give a damn about the laws that are passed! Lets just be simple and pass a law that bans the killing of kids and women and those that are not able to defend themselves!!! Dont ya think it would be easier to just do that than to have all those complicated laws that ban assault style weapons or magazine capacity!!! OH! im sorry, i forget that the criminals would find that kind of ban on killing innocents may be a bit too simple and might actually confuse them!! But , i bet that if it was passed, they would have no choice but to abide by that particular law!! because it would be the law , correct!!! get real!!! im ma go get a beer! and im drivin too! God Bless America!!!
ANYONE can tell you that won't help...
1. How would YOU like to be the cop on that detail??
2. Increase in student shootings by stressed-out, trigger-happy cops
3. One shot to the back of the head of the cop and the school is now unarmed
4. EXTREMELY expensive waste of taxpayer money to train and place thousands of new gaurds
5. Shooters will pick new "unprotected" areas to make their mark like Hospitals and Churches.
There IS no solution.. suck it up and fry the shooters that live.
How crazy and easily led have we become? Won't this insanity ever stop? In all these school districts who are ponying up the funds for these police in schools, they have been laying off teachers and counselors c/o lack of funds. Led by the nra (aka gun manufacturers) this country is rushing head long into turning our schools into mini-prisons, readying students early for prison life. I'll bet has you look at the abuses listed in the story you'll see the same common line that is seen in nearly every police dept in this country-that is none of them even remotely represent the makeup of the communitys they serve and protect. Pretty much ALL police forces are perdominately white males, some how no matter how educated they are minoritys who are often the majority in the city never seem to pass the exams at rates that would mirror the communities they serve!! This includes women, and usually includes the fire depts. also, the poor solved crime rates that ensue are a direct result of resistance to the white officers (the word descended from the word on plantations-overseers). Now we are trying to instill this nonsense into our schools! When the first AR-15 ,automatic pistol and drum magazine carrying, bullet proof vest wearing young prepared to die psycho has a shootout in some school with police (remember they WANT to die), the resulting bystander carnage (they are trying to kill has many people has possible) will generate lawsuits which will break most school districts. All of this to keep from enacting sensible gun laws that would help us to join the rest of the civilized world with less than a 100 gun deaths instead of 11,000+ a year, then we would have done for our children what the nra and a small number of 2nd amendment fear mongers are unwilling to do for THEIR CHILDREN !!!
you idiot. an AR is not a pistol. And you vote?
IwillBeHeard
Your right. They should make any minority that applies a Cop. There are just to many white Cops. If the minority can't do the paper work or can't qualify, hire them anyway. Damned it, those minorities should be Cops even if they are as dumb as a box of rocks. Screw those Cracka Cops.
ummm....3rdwhl.....there is a comma between AR15 and pistol. meaning, in case you didn't learn this in school, AND. AR15 AND automatic pistol and so on and so forth. and YOU VOTE????
3RDWHL. Never argue with an idiot. They will bring you down to their level and beat you with their experience. Spot on, though. Shame, isn't it?
yup, pro gun & damn proud of it. But not for welfare supporters, drone attacks on taxpaying US citizens or any other laws only a traitor would vote for. Notice how all my commas are in place too. I graduated and own a successful business. I also own lots of guns & haven't seen any of them jump up, grab a drum magazine & magically turn into a fully automatic all out "assualt rifle". Ever think maybe the kids born to mothers' rewarded for keeping their legs in the air to a half dozen different fathers & no parental guidance has anything to do with it? How about that revolving door technology we use at the copshop? The list goes on for miles. Kill the killers on t.v. for all to see the circumstances of their prospective criminal activities. Not P.C.? too bad, live with what you create then. You go stand in that school & protect those kids from the one in a million that's bent on killing someone with a knife, car, bat, taser etc etc. Deranged PEOPLE kill people with any tool they see fit. Why aren't you complaining about those border agents your friend Holder had killed? How about all the DUI deaths? All the 20 oz soda deaths? It's said that if you are robbed, it's by someone you know alot af the time. People who know me, know I have guns stashed everywhere along with motion detectors & dogs. Word gets around & I'll bet my life that no one tries anything that threatens me or my family. Has worked supurbly thus far. How's bummers gun control in chicago workin? Lil under par I'm thinkin'. Better ad.. all my guns are going on a rummage sale tomorrow.
Why would you want some trigger happy idiot walking around the school with a gun?
You right, we wouldn't. So let's either have Cops or armed Guards as a deterrent.
you go call that cop a trigger happy idiot. remember, you hired him & pay him to protect you yet you just can't believe some want him to do his job.
Anyone ever notice the one constant in all mass shootings? Someone always calls the police.
The police.
Trained men (and women) with loaded guns. Only by then it is usually way too late.
Much better to have trained, and armed personnel already on site before the nut starts his shooting.
Just because these people are nuts doesn't mean they are stupid. They will bypass a well guarded target.
Thank you Sir, common sense. They call someone else that carries a gun. Not the Fire Department, not the Media, not more unarmed people. They call the Cops & they in turn call out a Swat Team with ASSUALT RIFLES.
" They will bypass a well guarded target."
Right. Because the ONE THING they fear is failure. Not death, not prison, but FAILURE.
wowicantbelieveit, I agree that no one should be in a war zone, but aren't you being a bit ridiculous by saying armed guards makes a war zone. Do you not go to other public places that have armed personnel such as movie theaters, shopping malls, grocery stores, banks, sporting events? I wonder where you live because armed guards are everywhere. Do police officers scare you as well, since they are armed? Having them in schools isn't the best soultion, however, what else do we have at the moment to stop someone, the police took 20 minutes to get to sandy hook, so it wouldn't have mattered what gun he had cause he had all the time in the world, and thats really sad and scary. Israel has armed guards with high fences around schools, and they have no school shootings. Unfortunately the schools look like prisons, but at least the kids are safe, and thats what matters.
IF you know of a better way to stop these incidents from occurring, please speak up because no one seems to have the best answer
We defend our Presidents-----------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our Congressman-------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our Governors----------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our Celebrities ----------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our sporting events-----------------------------------------With guns
We defend our jewelry stores-------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our banks-----------------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our office buildings-----------------------------------------With guns
We defend our factories--------------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our Courts-----------------------------------------------------With guns
We defend our children at school -------------------------------------With a sign
That reads----- THIS IS A GUN FREE ZONE
And then call someone with a gun if there is an emergency.
what's the point? they now pretty well have permission to use a drone on any one of us. Worse yet, I just can't believe how fukcing retarded the gun grabbin idiots can be. We DO NOT carry automatic weapons! semi auto yes. Big difference. If you are not going to pull your empty head outa your azz already, at least pucker said azzhole & choke yourself so the rest of us don't have to listen to your garbage.
It is obvious from the article that they feel the cops are their own gang and only interested in making money and protecting their brothers - fellow gang members. This may be true.
The only protection is to arm all the kids and let them weed out the trouble makers.
How about a solution..... kill killers. Naaa, we'll protect them so they can kill more. "protect my kids" but don't use police protection, trained & paid for by our tax dollars. (well, those not suckin bummers goobmint tit yet) Shall we just let them sit around & eat donuts?
There were armed policemen in Columbine H.S. on that horrible day so many were senselessly killed. And their presence did NOTHING to stop or deter the tragedy from occurring.
Many school districts do not have enough funding to employ teachers and/or necessary educational materials. If we can not afford the very tools necessary to educate our children - we certainly can not afford "armed guards" in our schools.
But what we CAN afford is armed and trained volunteers. That is a huge asset that we're not using. Many of our citizens are better trained and experienced than the average policeman who trains with his weapon once a year. And a lot of them are willing to help. For nothing, just to give back to the community.
outragious, then go volunteer "your" time.
I have.
So have I,,,
Cops are not perfect, they make mistakes, park them in front of the schools and leave them out of the halls. They won't disturb the students, they will be on the scene, they will act as a deterent. The biggest issue I have is that our children are easy targets for an abusive cop. Keep them outside. They would never have the patients it takes to guide our children without bullying. If you are an exceptional cop, I am not talking about you, you know the people you have worked with. Seriously, be honest with yourself, they are in the force. You can't be in all the districts taking care of buisness.
Do you mean "volunteers" such as the ones Steven Segal proclaimed to have been "training" in Az.? The same volunteers the Az. sheriff failed to do criminal checks on? As it turned out- several of those "volunteers" have felony criminal convictions! A few of those convictions included child abuse as well.
I do not support teachers or some no name untrained volunteer having weapons within our schools.
I do support the 2nd Amendment. That is when folks are legal to do so AND are responsible enough to ensure no one but the owner of the weapon(s) may gain access to them at any given time. The ease of access to weapons is much too often the cause of accidental deaths among children. As well as how mentally unbalanced family members and/or friends using them in scenarios such as Columbine and Newtown.
IMHO, turning our schools into anything that resembles a prison atmosphere is not conducive for children to learn in. And that IS the purpose of them attending school to begin with!
Wait a sec...whats the problem? Why cant we just put more Signs up..??
Biker, love it. If there was a "gun free zone" sign on all doors and windows, the "nut cases" couldn't miss them, they would then know for sure guns were a no no..
Motivated educated and properly trained officers can be an asset to the educational institution and community. They need to share the roles of enforcement officer, educator and counsellor. The are a great resource for the students faculty and staff. Depending upon the particular school the roles can change, just to have an officer with a gun in the school is couterproductive. Working in tadem with probation officers and crisis workers they can often head off a problems before it esclates into trama. They have more authority to react in crisis that including a mental health crisis. To just put a trained street cop into a school is a disservice to the officer and the school. Having that trusted trained officer in the school promotes communication and prevents violence inside and outside the school, seen it, done it, believe in it. The National School Resource Officer Association is a great starting place for information, if you are a key leader in your community check out their information and champion this prevention intervention approach.
sunny, you are 100% correct, please post that same info all over, and many times. You hit the nail on the head. Thank you.
Outragious
They also had an assault weapons ban in place during columbine, which did nothing to
deter them from bringing illegal weapons and bombs, so if armed guards can’t
stop somebody, then what is your solution, because there really isn’t any way to
stop a nut from committing such a heinous crime
Anyone shows up in my daughters high school without a law degree...plus police training, I will be the first to file a law suit. You ignorant podunks with guns are not going to be allowed around my girl. I hope you all fall off the face of the earth to the down under....all so to speak.
too bad... she's a sitting duck target for anyone to do whatever. It isn't the law abiding gun owner you should be worried about. I grew up around a cabinet full of unlocked guns & have made it to the ripe old age of 45. How can that be?
Police officers in schools? Fine, but who is policing the police? If they are all just white racists, then that is just starting up the Third Reich again. If they are singling out minorities and not the white kids, then they are Nazis. I stated this would happen in an earlier posting that this would happen, and that is just what is happening. How long before these so called protectors start banning Blacks and Hispanics and Asians and Arabians from schools? How long before these same minorities start to fight back? All these conspiracy talkers don't wan a New World Order, but that is just what this is coming to. You are all afraid of being controlled by the government, but that is what the police are. My Uncles that fought in WWII against this sort of thing are probably rilling over in their graves knowing that the Gestapo is back and alive in the very country they died protecting.
Police officers ought to be patrolling the community, not walking a beat inside a school or sitting in a parked PATROL car with their radar - handing out frivolous speeding tickets.
Trained security officers are all that are needed inside of a school, armed if the administration deems this necessary.
Police officers are being assigned to duties that are not productive, making anyone feel safer, or are cost effective for the over stretched tax-payers.
your school not in your community?