Now it's the School Police That Are Militarized

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Now-it-s-the-School-Police-by-earl-ofari-hutchin-Militarized-Police-Militarization_Police_Police_Police-Abuse-Of-Power-140826-962.html

Now it's the School Police That Are Militarized
By earl ofari hutchinson
OpEdNews Op Eds 8/26/2014 at 13:43:49

The ridiculous and terrifying sight of dozens of police dressed and packing assault weapons as if they had just stepped out of a combat zone in Iraq or Afghanistan in Ferguson, Missouri was horrifying enough. Now we find that an increasing number of America's school police are packing assault weapons. In the past two years, school districts in eight California communities and in Topeka, Kan., Gainesville, Fla., and Granite, Utah have approved their use. The Compton, California school district drew headline news recently when it joined the parade of school districts that authorized its police to pack these high caliber battlefield killing weapons. The danger and absurdity of school officials rush to arm their school police to the teeth is that there is absolutely no need for these weapons.

The Bureau of Statistics did a ten year study from 2002 to 2011 of mass shootings in America. It found that less than one-fifth of one percent of all shootings in the country involved four or more victims. Let's fine tune this more. Noted criminologist James Alan Fox crunched the numbers on shootings on all school campuses in the nation and found that less than one percent of all shootings involved multiple victims. Let's fine tune the numbers even more, the Centers for Disease Control in two separate reports on K-12 school shootings found that the chance of a child dying in school in any given year from a homicide or suicide was less than one in 1 in 1 million in the early 1990s and 1 in two million in the latter 1990s. This probability has remained unchanged in the decade since. The numbers and percentages tell one glaring fact. Despite the horror, hysteria, and media sensationalism over the Newtown and Columbine massacres, mass shoot ups of America's schools are not just rare, but rarer than ever.

Now consider this. There has been no reported mass shooting at any school in any predominantly black or Hispanic neighborhood in the country ever. Now consider this even more. A federal judge in Maryland in a ruling in a suit brought by gun rights groups to overturn Maryland's ban on assault weapons was bluntly said that assault weapons cause more injuries and fatalities when they are used. She specifically cited AR-15s as the most lethal of these weapons. She made no distinction about whose hands they were in, criminals or law enforcement. They are still weapons of mass killing. She further noted that the weapons pose an even deadlier risk to law enforcement because of their enhanced penetrating capabilities.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that an AR-15 poses a grave threat to all who handle or come within its striking range, these school boards have still barged ahead to allow its school police to arm themselves with these weapons of mass killings. They tore a page straight out of the playbook the NRA has used to beat back any congressional effort to ban assault weapons and claimed that they give cops a weapon to take out the bad guy presumably faster and more permanent in a shoot-out on a school campus.