Colorado STEM school where shooting happened didn't have a sheriff's officer due to prior dispute

Can’t imagine a deputy responding any faster than these kids managed to do on their own.

Those four kids, especially the one that was killed saved lives that day. That is what the media should be portraying that we had a coward come to school and try and take innocent lives but was stopped by brave students.

Schools shouldn't need police officers. We didn't have them 30 years ago.

Punkinhead said:

Schools shouldn't need police officers. We didn't have them 30 years ago.

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Both statements are true, and no one could disagree. But our world has changed and there is no going back.

"After the dispute, the school still had a daily part-time, off-duty sheriff’s deputy with a squad car in addition to full-time private security, the statement said."

I have not read anything that the Security Officer and Sheriff Officers delayed their response. One report said that the Security Officer tackled one of the attackers and held her (?) until Sheriff Officers arrived.

"The school expected the resource officer to help with traffic and became upset when the sheriff’s office asked the deputy to prioritize other duties."

Can't be inside the school if he is playing traffic cop.

J-Bar said:

Both statements are true, and no one could disagree. But our world has changed and there is no going back.

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I’m not convinced that the world has changed all that much with respect to school safety. Public perception on the other hand certainly has.

Media portrayals (both liberal and conservative) are driven by ratings, and if it bleeds it leads. Virtually all violent crime trends have had a downward trajectory since the early 90s. The most violet act perpetrated on school grounds in the US is still the Bath, MI bombing, and that was all the way back in 1927.

Statistically speaking, the ‘good old days’ weren’t all that good.

We always provided school resource officers during my years in police work. That was long before we ever heard of “active shooters” (1973-1995 in south Florida). We also provided a detail every afternoon to deal with gang violence as those same fine young people weren’t exactly ladies and gentlemen as they left school each day. In those days we had both ethnic and race based gangs in our local middle and high schools.

As both a shift sergeant and finally a watch commander I can’t say we had much assistance from the administrations in each school... This was during a time when we would have an occasional “shots fired” call and witnesses would say the kid(s) involved - ran back into the school...

The implication seems to be that the SRO was a deterrent when present, and that his absence created the perception of opportunity for the murderers.

NPR has another interview this morning with a Columbine survivor who is now a Colorado state legislator. He offers a bill every legislative session to allow teachers to carry concealed. The idea is that an unknown/uncertain credible force of some armed staff would act as a deterrent to coward murderers who want no opposition in a gun free zone.

BSA1 said:

"The school expected the resource officer to help with traffic and became upset when the sheriff’s office asked the deputy to prioritize other duties."

Can't be inside the school if he is playing traffic cop.

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The SRO at my kids' school does traffic duty, but it doesn't much affect his ability to be in the school to protect students. The traffic duties that they are speaking of, at least in my area, is controlling traffic while the kids are leaving of the evenings on buses and in parents' vehicles. Other schools may need more than that though seeing as this is a very rural area and traffic is fairly minimal.

Stopping mass shootings will not have simple solutions. There needs to be more than an armed teacher in a classroom being the first and last line of defense. I think these school shootings are a combination of terrorism, media attention seeking, and there clearly have been mentally ill mass shooters. Obviously armed teachers are better than not armed teachers because the killers are going after the softest targets with the most amount of victims. But a good solution is going to require thought and a lot more effort.

Punkinhead said:

Schools shouldn't need police officers. We didn't have them 30 years ago.

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30 years ago, it was the parents who were sedating themselves and seeing psychiatrists.

Now it's the kids.

Punkinhead said:

Schools shouldn't need police officers. We didn't have them 30 years ago.

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That is so true. Many of us didn't need home motion activated security cameras, motion detector security lighting and doorbell cameras back then either but how many here have them now. Granted the technology we have today wasn't available then but it's just another sad chapter added to the world we now live in.

So what if the STEM school didn't have a sheriff's deputy as their SRO? They did have an armed security guard serving as an SRO who was former Marine and was a former deputy. The school wasn't without protection.

Punkinhead said:

Schools shouldn't need police officers. We didn't have them 30 years ago.

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I guess that just depends on where you went to school, doesn't it?

BSA1 said:

"After the dispute, the school still had a daily part-time, off-duty sheriff’s deputy with a squad car in addition to full-time private security, the statement said."

I have not read anything that the Security Officer and Sheriff Officers delayed their response. One report said that the Security Officer tackled one of the attackers and held her (?) until Sheriff Officers arrived.

"The school expected the resource officer to help with traffic and became upset when the sheriff’s office asked the deputy to prioritize other duties."

Can't be inside the school if he is playing traffic cop.

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There were some report that the school guard fired his weapon during the event. I saw some reports that he fired on responding officer and may also have fired at at least one kid. The reporting on this event has been very very strange. Lots of quotes and few facts. It has been impossible to tell who did what. Which shooter shot what kids, and who exactly subdued who. All that raises red flags to me. It always seems that something is rotten in Denmark (ver).

Parenting: lack of discipline, kids shown no attention, no cause and effect of personal decisions, violence shown to kids at younger ages, breakdown of morals in the home, lack of respect for elders, and on and on.

Social media/media: creates a narcissistic and egotistic attitude that covers the actual self-loathing these people are experiencing, false narratives, disrespect that can go unchecked, kids not being wise/mature enough to wield such a powerful platform for good and not evil.

There is an answer to all of this but is off topic to this forum.

A good start is to call out evil for evil and stop giving these persons doing evil attention that lasts long after their atrocities end. Personally, I think it should be called out as evil without the attention placed on the perpetrator and rather on the hero’s and survivors.

stevekozak said:

There were some report that the school guard fired his weapon during the event. I saw some reports that he fired on responding officer and may also have fired at at least one kid. The reporting on this event has been very very strange. Lots of quotes and few facts. It has been impossible to tell who did what. Which shooter shot what kids, and who exactly subdued who. All that raises red flags to me. It always seems that something is rotten in Denmark (ver).

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Coverage is lacking as the incident doesn't fit the main stream medias usual narrative of these types of senseless tragedies. No evil black rifle was used and one of the shooters is a female identifying as male transgender.

Child acts up in school. Administrator meets with parents. Parents say your picking on my kid. Kid sees no recourse on his/her actions. Kids do what they want. There in lies the problem. My fear was school calling home because my dad would break his foot off in my a$$.

Ks5shooter said:

Child acts up in school. Administrator meets with parents. Parents say your picking on my kid. Kid sees no recourse on his/her actions. Kids do what they want. There in lies the problem. My fear was school calling home because my dad would break his foot off in my a$$.

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Pretty much!

<*(((>< said:

Those four kids, especially the one that was killed saved lives that day. That is what the media should be portraying that we had a coward come to school and try and take innocent lives but was stopped by brave students.

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There was another recent event in I think North Carolina where a brave student died protecting others. He was in the ROTC. The one that died in Colorado was planning to be a Marine. When you first see these reports you could think "Why are the children stuck protecting themselves?", then you realize 17- and 18-year-old young men have always been in our armed forces. Maybe their couch potato video-game-addict classmates are "children", but these heroes are not.

jamesjames said:

The implication seems to be that the SRO was a deterrent when present, and that his absence created the perception of opportunity for the murderers.

NPR has another interview this morning with a Columbine survivor who is now a Colorado state legislator. He offers a bill every legislative session to allow teachers to carry concealed. The idea is that an unknown/uncertain credible force of some armed staff would act as a deterrent to coward murderers who want no opposition in a gun free zone.

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The antis are adamantly opposed to teachers carrying, and portray it as being a job requirement for which many teachers would be unsuited or find uncomfortable. AFAIK the idea is that teachers who already shoot and have a carry permit should be ALLOWED to carry in school. Which probably needless to say I would support 100%.

As far as "the times have changed", I wish parents would adjust to this and start locking up their guns. Even the best teenager is an unpredictable creature filled with boiling hormones on an emotional roller coaster. My son was a good kid who I took to the range regularly but he didn't have access to the guns without my supervision until he was an adult.

This is an old debate. Some folks will say that they are the masters of their house and given the kid safety lessons from birth on guns to de-mystify them. Others will point to children who have retrieved family guns and saved the day.

It's not clear from research that the safety lessons stick with kids. You may think your know your child's life and pressures but you may not. Being a psychologist and having studied developmental issues, my take is that I wouldn't leave guns unlocked in general. I would instruct my children on firearms and if there was a particular raised threat (as after a disaster), I might make the guns available but I wouldn't every day. Just as kid, I was exposed to wine but the liquor was locked up. Once past the legal age, my dad and I would take a drink together.

Certainly, not taking precautions around a troubled child is really stupid. That has happened with some school shooters. The parents paid the price as first victims.

YMMV.

Apparently the suspects were able to break into the older suspects parents locked gun "cabinet".
https://nypost.com/2019/05/10/color...ts-reportedly-took-guns-from-parents-cabinet/

GEM said:

This is an old debate. Some folks will say that they are the masters of their house and given the kid safety lessons from birth on guns to de-mystify them. Others will point to children who have retrieved family guns and saved the day.

It's not clear from research that the safety lessons stick with kids. You may think your know your child's life and pressures but you may not. Being a psychologist and having studied developmental issues, my take is that I wouldn't leave guns unlocked in general. I would instruct my children on firearms and if there was a particular raised threat (as after a disaster), I might make the guns available but I wouldn't every day. Just as kid, I was exposed to wine but the liquor was locked up. Once past the legal age, my dad and I would take a drink together.

Certainly, not taking precautions around a troubled child is really stupid. That has happened with some school shooters. The parents paid the price as first victims.

YMMV.

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Parents need to recognize when a child is troubled, rather than living in denial as many do.

On the topic of kids' access to guns, there was a case a couple of years ago where an 11-year-old girl (trained in firearms by her parents and already a proud hunting licensee) home alone in a rural area followed the family's previously established plan that in case of a break-in she should take a shotgun and wait in a specific closet. When the BGs broke into the room where the closet was and opened the closet door she was ready for them. She thankfully did not have to fire, they were terrified and ran away.