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ESAD

On 12/24/12 11:29 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 24 Dec 2012 09:30:25 -0500, ESAD wrote:

"It will be a sad day for this country if children can safely attend
their classes only under the protection of armed guards."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the violence aimed at black Americans
in September 1957 at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Eisenhower sent in the troops to protect children from the terrorists
who were keeping them from attending school.

There have been cops in middle and high schools here for decades but
they are only there to catch a kid smoking a joint in the bathroom.

The cop at Columbine was under specific orders not to engage an active
shooter. I agree that to actually be effective a "guard" should get
extensive training and that should be in conjunction with a planned
procedure about what everyone else will be doing.

Back in my high school days, we had a plainclothes police officer
assigned permanently. He was armed, but I doubt he ever had to use his
pistol, not back then. If memory serves, his name was "Al," everyone
knew him and he seem to know everybody. In those days, high schoolers at
our school engaged in pretty harmless mischief, not expensive vandali$m,
and there weren't many fights. The cafeteria food was just awful, so
many juniors and seniors "snuck" off campus to run over to an Italian
deli a long block away and get a good sub sandwich. That infuriated the
assistant principal, but not Al. He also strolled over there for lunch a
couple of days a week, usually in the midst of a small crowd of
students. For Al, a kid wanting a decent lunch was not an "offense"
worth his time or trouble.

Life was a lot simpler and safer in the early 1960's.