Democrats say you don’t need a gun to protect yourself; the police will do that. They then say you don’t need police; unarmed social workers will do that. They say teachers don’t need to be armed, we have School Resources officers (SROs) for that, and now they are saying we have to get rid of SRO’s.
Related: It’s Democrats That Are “Killing” Black Americans
New Hampshire’s new statewide commission on law enforcement accountability heard “testimony” this past week. One of the ideas proposed was to eliminate School Resource Officers.
Attorney Anna Elbroch, Rudman Teaching Fellow at the University of New Hampshire School of Law told the Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community, and Transparency that SROs contribute to “a school-to-prison pipeline.”
She said there is no conclusive evidence that SROs make schools safer and in the cases of mass school shootings at Columbine, Parkland and Virginia Tech, all occurred with armed security present.
And,
“There are too many opportunities for students to feel uncomfortable,” with a uniformed police officer permanently stationed in their schools, she said.
I’m not a pro-SRO guy. I think we need trained armed staff and teachers carrying concealed on a rotating basis, but the introduction of SRO’s – which has been going on for decades – appears to have some benefits that outweigh any alleged discomfort on the part of some students.
Education World.com reports that,
A survey of almost 700 school resource officers includes sobering statistics about the high number of crimes and assaults prevented by school-based police officers. A high school principal who lived through a school shooting told Education World that such officers not only help students feel safe but also give them someone in whom to confide.
From the article.
- More than 90 percent of the officers avert between one and 25 violent acts in an average school year.
- 24 percent of officers reported taking a loaded firearm from a student or another person on campus
- 87 percent confiscated knives or other weapons with blades
- Sixty-seven percent reported preventing a school faculty or staff member from being assaulted, either by a student or someone else on campus.
- 84 percent of SROs think that crimes on school grounds are underreported to police
- 86 percent think the presence of an officer on campus results in more crimes being reported.
- 70 percent of the SROs participating in the survey reported having direct contact with 31 or more students each school day;
- 39 percent reported contact with more than 100 students.
- Ninety-three percent indicated they spent time counseling individual students.
This is an older survey, but if anything, we should expect the same or more of the same today. SRO’s creating safe spaces for kids to learn. And this data supports that.
According to the DOJ, Juvenile arrests have been dropping for years – which just happens to coincide with the rise in the number of SRO’s. That’s anecdotal, of course. But it does challenge the left’s “school to prison” pipeline narrative.
And there could be other reasons why juvenile crime dropped but if what the “experts” say is true wouldn’t arrests be going up? They are not.
I know, math is hard. So, is this. The single biggest threat to black lives is black on black crime, and the Democrat party position is BLM’s, which is to create more space for that crime to occur.
Is it just me, or does this “eliminate SRO’s idea” sound like the same thing? It does, so when they say we need to think about things in a new way, ask them why it’s always their new way or the highway?
