LA school police to be given semi-automatic guns

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New Zealand Herald

LA school police to be given semi-automatic guns
By Nick Allen
3:33 PM Friday Aug 22, 2014

Police on school grounds in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton are to be armed with semi-automatic AR-15 assault weapons in an attempt to prevent future school massacres.

The decision came after officers said they were not well enough equipped to deal with any attacker wielding a rifle with high capacity magazines and wearing body armour, as has been the case in several recent US school shootings.

Using semi-automatic weapons would allow them to penetrate body armour and to be more accurate than when firing with handguns, police said.

Compton, a suburb of 100,000 people in southern Los Angeles, has long been associated with gang and gun culture, although the murder rate has dropped dramatically in recent years.


Read more: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11312784

[sakabatou]

1. WHY?!

[Art_from_Ark]

3. I once applied for a job in Compton.

The personnel manager told me I could have the job if I really wanted it, but he wouldn't recommend taking it "if I valued my life".

[davidpdx]

8. What you value your life?

Oh you chicken! At least you only have earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis over there in Japan.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. Well, even the worst earthquake

just knocked a bunch of books off of shelves and threw the wraparound window a bit out of joint around here. I'm far enough from the coast where tsunamis aren't a concern, and typhoons always fizzle out by the time they get up here. So I would rather take my chances here than in Compton

[Recursion]

35. Ironically, Compton isn't even close to the most violent part of LA

That's mostly an image sold by NWA and others. Compton is at the southern end of a violent area, but Rancho Dominguez and Green Meadows on either side of it are much more dangerous (and all of those pale compared to Chesterfield Square). If you go north and west from Compton you start to get into much more violent areas.

[grahamhgreen]

14. Cuz you need to pay for them.

[brush]

29. There should be more info in this OP

The handguns the cops use, most likely Glocks, are semi-automatic. That just means that they fire one round when the trigger is pulled, as opposed to an automatic which will fire as long as you hold down the trigger.

The AR-15s have to be modified to fire on automatic, they can modified as well to hold large capacity magazines of round sizes different from the original .223 round.

BTW, it is illegal in most states to modify them to fire automatically. What are they up to? This seems like over kill — no pun intended, or maybe that's what's intended by the . . .

[MannyGoldstein]

2. What could go wrong?

These poor devils need RPGs, to *really* do their jobs.

[Maedhros]

28. Nuke the site from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

[Recursion]

4. Stupid. Schools are more safe, not less safe, than in the past

What do you do with a polity that blinkardly refuses to accept simple facts like that?

[candelista]

16. Do you have a reference for that?

I'd like to see it. The article says the murder rate in Compton has dropped in recent years. Is that what you are referring to?

[Recursion]

17. Universally, nationwide, for 20 years straight.

The murder rate today is basically half of what it was 20 years ago.

[LanternWaste]

21. Is the same true for schools in addition to to an entire country (i.e, that which was originally spe

Is the same true for schools in addition to to an entire country (i.e, that which was originally specified)?

[Recursion]

33. Yes. It's probably the most under-reported story of this generation

Not only under-reported, but kind of actively talked around by the media.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49

n 2012, students ages 12–18 were victims of about 1,364,900 nonfatal victimizations at school, including 615,600 thefts and 749,200 violent victimizations, 89,000 of which were serious violent victimizations. The victimization rates for students in 2012 varied according to student characteristics. Between 1992 and 2012, the total victimization rates for students ages 12–18 generally declined both at school (from 181 to 52 per 1,000) and away from school (from 173 to 38 per 1,000). This pattern also held for thefts, violent victimizations, and serious violent victimizations

A student's hance of being a victim of a violent crime at school fell from 18% to 5% over 20 years. A student in 1992 was nearly 4 times as likely to be a victim of violence in school as a student in 2012.

[candelista]

22. That's an average, right?

I was asking about Compton.

[Recursion]

34. Individual districts usually don't publish violence statistics, however...

... the orders of magnitude we're talking about here still make some comparisons easy.

http://www.areavibes.com/compton-ca/crime/

The overall rate of violent crime victimization in Compton is 1 in 92, or about 1%. That is still lower than the national violent crime in school victimization rate 20 years ago. And overall violent crime rates are always higher than school violent crime rates. So, yes, the Compton school violent crime rate has gone down.

for schools in general:

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49

The violence rate is just over one quarter of what it was in 1992.

As a side note, Compton has never been the most violent part of LA (Chesterfield Square and Harvard Park keep vying for that); its reputation is mostly because of NWA's and Ice Cube's "marketing" of it as an inner-city hellhole.

[NickB79]

18. Murder by gunshot has fallen by almost 50% in 25 years

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says

Since 1993, the United States has seen a drop in the rate of homicides and other violence involving guns, according to two new studies released Tuesday. Using government data, analysts saw a steep drop for violence in the 1990s, they saw more modest drops in crime rates since 2000.

"Firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011," according to a report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, "and nonfatal firearm crimes dropped from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

There were seven gun homicides per 100,000 people in 1993, the Pew Research Center study says, which dropped to 3.6 gun deaths in 2010. The study relied in part on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49 percent lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation's population grew," according to the Pew study. "The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75 percent lower in 2011 than in 1993."

The crazy thing is that, in that same timeframe, we've added something like 30 million people and 50 million guns to the country, and we didn't even pass any new gun laws (we actually let the Assault Weapon's Ban expire, in fact).

[Sherman A1]

5. so let me ask

based upon the article, it indicates that the murder rate has dropped dramatically in recent years, however we need to give the school security police increased firepower in the form of military assault rifles?

Seems to be something of a disconnect here...............

[secondwind]

6. omg, murder rate is down and yet they are arming the "school police" with semi-automatic weapons..

I can't imagine what could go wrong with this.... can you?

UGH

[Trillo]

7. I'm remembering the story a few days old that LA schools dropped their zero tolerance

policies. So, I guess with this story, the zero tolerance reasserts itself. The idea that a school cop might actually need to use an AR15 on school campus has nothing to do with zero tolerance policies. /sarcasm.

[kelliekat44]

9. Penetrate body armor??? They need to be at the Bundy ranch, not a school. nt

[whereisjustice]

10. holy fucking police state!

[SidDithers]

20. Pine fresh scent!!...nt

Sid

[lexx21]

23. I thought Buck Wheat had been shot? n/t

[SidDithers]

24. Some dems are very pragmatic...nt

Sid

[L0oniX]

11. I used to play with my friends and cousins ...war, cops and robbers with toy guns that used caps.

This shit makes me feel old and like I was born on another planet. A real AR15 in schools? WTF!

[etherealtruth]

12. WTF?

Militarization of our police (read country) marching forward) .... what could go wrong?

[Adrahil]

13. Weird wording....

Being "semi-automatic" doesn't make a bullet powerful enough to penetrate body armor. That's a function of the cartridge. These kind of articles drive me nuts.

[Recursion]

19. Yeah I thought that was poorly written too

But I've given up on journalists bothering to learn this subject at all.

[lexx21]

25. This makes no sense...

The cops on campus already carry 9mm side arms. So if a cop on the school grounds who is packing heat doesn't stop a school massacre, why do they think a cop with an ar15 would deter one? Would you be more dead by being shoot with a 223 than you would being shot with a 9mm round? Other than the fact that that SCREAMS for an accident to happen..........

Personal belief.... someone higher up in the police force was taken on a golfing weekend by a gun manufacturer. "Hey, we could arm our school resource officers with your rifles... yeah, that's the ticket! Now bring me those two hookers you were telling me about..."

[Sgent]

30. A tacticle vest

will stop a 9mm, it will not stop a .223. In addition, the .223 is much more accurate at range.

[lexx21]

31. Two points here....

1) Head shot
2) How much range do you need in a hallway

[Sgent]

40. This who discussion is a little wierd

and I'm not a gun nut by any means (although I'm comfortable with them).

A pistol might have a range of 10 yards, getting increasingly inaccurate as it goes further. No one but a sniper tries for a headshot, its to hard and too likely to miss.

At least at the HS campus I attended, the campus was spread out over a good half a square mile or so. I have no idea what the size of the campus is in this case.

Finally, even in a long hallway a rifle is much more accurate. The only time a pistol has and advantage is quickdraw at close range.

[NOLALady]

26. Obviously

they are concerned about school shootings such as those that have occurred in more affluent areas. They are simply thinking of the children.

[Recursion]

36. Worrying about Sandy Hook-style mass shootings is like worrying about meteor strikes

Dog attacks kill more students in a given year. Bluntly, if someone tells me they are worried about a random mass shooting, I take that to mean they don't know anything about the actual problems of school violence.

[HooptieWagon]

27. My understanding the weapons will be locked in car trunk.

That was from another article I read. So its not like the school cops are walking down the halls carrying them.
As for violence, it appears Colombine has inspired some copy-cat incidents. While overall gun-violence is down, it appears to be more frequent in schools. Plus, more gang activity now than several decades ago.
Overall, having a semi-auto rifle available, but not carried by the officer, seems like a reasonable compromise.

[Recursion]

37. Violence is *not* more frequent in schools

It is certainly reported more, but the violent crime victimization rate in schools in 2012 was one quarter of what it was in 1992.

[HooptieWagon]

38. Do you have figures by decades?

Where are you linking? I am quite sure there was little gun violence in 1962 or 72. Hell, it was a BIG deal getting caught with a knife then. Nobody considered bringing a gun to school. Nobody considered attacking a school. All we had were occassional fist-fights between cliques... in my school it was surfers vs. jocks. Pretty minor and silly shit, quickly forgotten.

On edit: I found a CNN list.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/19/us/u-s-school-violence-fast-facts/?c=&page=1
Appears to show an increase beginning around 1978. Perhaps earlier data is incomplete. Do you have more completr data?

[Recursion]

39. I don't have it with me but the current school violence level is comparable to the late 1950s

I am quite sure there was little gun violence in 1962 or 72

1962 was roughly comparable to now. 1972 was rather more violent. School violence levels basically mirror societal violence levels. I'll see if I can grovel through CDC for that chart.

The CNN list is only acts of random violence, which are so rare that they don't really make a dent in the overall violence numbers (as it says, it excludes "violence based on interpersonal conflicts", which is about 99% of violence in schools).

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

32. No hand grenades? No cluster bombs? No flame throwers? No napalm?

"...Compton, a suburb of 100,000 people in southern Los Angeles, has long been associated with gang and gun culture..."

We need to try to change the gun culture in every segment of American society with rational gun control instead of the arms race between police and perps and matching each other bullet for bullet. I'm not sure how we do that, but I think it starts with leadership at the top and the courage to face down the gun manufacturers and the gun lobby. I think educational opportunities and jobs will also be a factor.