The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-26)

THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 A

Texas school shooting

This year, the Justice Department will give $320 million to schools to hire law enforcement and im- prove safety. Congress has never passed meaningful gun regulations in response to a school shooting, but there have been other policy re- sponses. After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, President Don- ald Trump controversially suggested a federal program to arm schoolteachers, a proposal that received swift backlash from edu- cators. Later, he formed a school safety commission that suggested that schools consider arming teachers, expand mental health services and dismantled guid- ance that pressed schools to elim- inate racial disparities in disci- pline. Mia Tretta, 17, was wounded when a classmate open fired in the courtyard of Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., killing two of her classmates. She rejected the idea that arming teachers would have made her — or any other student — safer. “Teachers are not there to be war heroes,” said Tretta, who now advocates for stricter gun regulations. “It took eight seconds. No one can stop a shooter in eight seconds.” Brian Harrell, who was an as- sistant secretary at the Depart- ment of Homeland Security un- der Trump, said that no matter what is proposed, school campuses should increase security. Har- rell oversaw school security ini- tiatives. “Would-be criminals and do- mestic terrorists will always use the path of least resistance, and often times soft targets and schools, are picked for this violence,” Harrell wrote in an email. “While there will be calls for re- stricting guns, also at play here, is the fact that schools must invest in their campus security, becom-

ing a 'hard target.’ ” Previous studies on security measures have not yielded evi- dence that campus police officers make a definitive difference. In rare cases, they are able to disarm a shooter, or keep them from inflicting further damage. In others, they have been outgunned by well-armed shooters. In Park- land, the school resource officer hid rather than confront the gunman. But school shootings often transpire over a matter of seconds, long before an officer has time to intervene. According to federal data, the presence of police officers on school grounds has grown signifi- cantly since the Parkland shooting. Between 2016 and 2020, the percentage of schools with an armed police officer regularly pa- trolling campus grew from 43 percent to 52 percent. But after the murder of George Floyd, student activists success- fully pushed school districts to get police out of schools —- or to reduce their presence. Minneapo- lis, where Floyd was killed, was the first school district to abolish school police officers, followed by Denver; Portland, Ore.; Oakland, Calif.; Montgomery County, Md.; and several other small districts. Some of those districts have re- versed those decisions. Officials in Montgomery County, as well as Alexandria, Va., have returned police to schools. This shooting is likely to create pressure to install more school police officers. Many critics push back against the necessity for more school police or security guards, saying they can create a new set of prob- lems. Johnson noted that schools with police officers refer more students to law enforcement, sometimes for routine misbehav- ior, he said. And security guards and police officers have captured headlines for brutalizing — or even killing — young people.

BY MORIAH BALINGIT

Just hours after a man armed
with a rifle rained bullets on a
classroom full of fourth-graders,
Texas Attorney General Ken Pax-
ton (R) went on the conservative
Newsmax TV network to talk
about what might have prevented
the tragedy. His solution: better
school security, and arming
teachers and administrators.
“You’re going to have to do
more at the school,” Paxton said.
“You’re going to have to have
more people trained to react.”
Lawmakers from both parties
are facing pressure to respond to
one of the nation’s deadliest
school shootings, which occurred
just a week after 10 people were
slain at a Buffalo grocery store.
But Republicans, reluctant to
entertain gun regulations, have
already begun to focus their ef-
forts on what schools — and the
administrators, teachers and stu-
dents inside them — can do to
protect themselves and their stu-
dents from shooters like the 18-
year-old who got into Robb El-
ementary School. Salvador Ro-
lando Ramos outgunned law en-
forcement outside the building
shortly before massacring 19
fourth-graders and two teachers.
Politicians and policymakers
have proposed adding police offi-
cers, arming teachers and admin-
istrators and advocating for
“hardening” schools, making
schools more like airports. In a
news conference Wednesday, Lt.
Gov. Dan Patrick described what
the state did in the wake of a 2018
school shooting, when a student
killed eight classmates and two
teachers at Santa Fe High School

outside Houston. “Some of those strategies re- duced the number of entrances,” Patrick said. “They involve differ- ent types of strategies that should make it more difficult for a shooter to get into a school.” Since Columbine, schools have tried many ways to resist school shootings, including making campuses and school buildings less porous, requiring guests to sign in and wear name tags, drill- ing students to simulate school shootings, installing bulletproof glass and metal detectors and erecting doors without windows to make it more difficult for a shooter to see inside, or enter, a classroom. The tactics also included in- creasing the presence of armed guards and law enforcement. And in rare cases, they included arming teachers and administrators to respond to threats, a strategy that some rural schools employed in thinly patrolled counties. Texas is one of a small number of states that support districts that want to arm their teachers with training. According to the Texas Education Agency, there are 253 school employees serving as school marshals in 62 school systems. Critics of these notions say it is unfair — and ineffective — to put the onus on schools to stop mass shootings when so many of the measures being pushed now have failed to stop many of them. A Washington Post analysis of 225 school shootings between 1999 and 2018 found that 40 percent of the affected campuses had a police officer, meaning the mere presence of an officer was

Republicans want more

armed school staffers

learned that many of those measures “had no teeth,” or enforcement mechanism to make sure schools put them in place. Rice pointed to a 2020 report from Texas State University’s Texas School Safety Center, which found that only 67 of 1,022 school districts had a “sufficient” emergency operations plan, and 200 had a “viable active shooter policy.” “It was all just pomp and circumstance and the governor patting himself on the back and saying, ‘Look what a good job I did,’ ” Rice said. “And here we are again.” Rice said she and fellow advocates also pushed for more-strin- gent gun storage laws, because the alleged Santa Fe shooter had used his father’s weapons, and stronger laws to hold parents accountable if they failed to keep their weapons out of children’s hands and those weapons were used to harm others. “None of these things passed,” she said. “They were totally ig- nored. So we were very disap- pointed about that.” The legislature has approved more-modest measures to tight- en gun laws. In 2019, after the shooting in El Paso and another series of shootings in Odessa and Midland three weeks later that killed seven, Abbott signed a measure that made it a crime to lie on a background check to illegally purchase a gun. The state also approved a plan that year to spend $1 million on a campaign to promote safe gun storage. Abbott has faced intense pressure from gun rights groups, including the National Rifle As- sociation. On Wednesday, Aidan John- ston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, accused gun-control advocates, including President Biden, of trying to co- opt the Uvalde shooting in serv- ice of a political agenda. Johnston said his group advocates for al- lowing teachers to be armed in the classroom. “Nothing should come between a teacher who wants to defend children and their right to carry a firearm,” Johnston said. He called Robb Elementary School a “soft target” because it, like most Texas schools, is subject to the federal Gun-Free Zone Act. Zeph Capo, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said meaningful gun-control laws “fell to partisan politics within the Republican Party, a party that has chosen to listen to fringe voters over moms and dads, over teachers, over kids, over everyone else time and time again. Not only have they not done nothing, but they’ve actually made things worse.”

“The only reason to point
out bills like that is that they
somehow stopped this from hap-
pening. And they clearly didn’t.”
Moody said beefing up school
security is necessary in a chang-
ing threat environment. But he
emphasized that simply adding
more security guards, cameras or
metal detectors is not a reason-
able or effective solution. A
school security guard was pre-
sent at the shooting site on Tues-
day, authorities said.
“I want my children to grow up
as children. I don’t want to drop
them off at a low-security prison
every day,” Moody said.
Flo Rice, a substitute teacher
who was shot six times in the
Santa Fe attack, said the broad
school safety bill passed by Texas
lawmakers seemed “like a monu-
mental change.” She had testified
in favor of measures to boost
security and emergency response
at schools — measures she said
could have helped at Santa Fe,
where she had no phone to call
911 nor a key to lock the gym door
where she was working. “We
were very happy. We thought,
‘Wow, something got accom-
plished!’ ”
But she said she has since

violence prevention. “I was tenta- tively, cautiously — I don’t know if I want to say hopeful, but curious and open to the initia- tives that were put forward there.” A red-flag law and a re- quirement to report the loss or theft of guns “were sensible measures that most voters here in Texas and around the country would support,” Golden said. “But those fell short. He did not enact those things,” Golden said of Abbott. In a report last June, Gun Owners of America hailed the Texas legislature for passing four bills to bolster gun rights, including a provision authorizing what gun rights groups call “constitu- tional carry” — the ability of residents to carry a handgun without a license or training. Another bill repealed the gover- nor’s ability to regulate firearms during a disaster declaration or state of emergency. “I do think it is strange to cite legislation from the wake of San- ta Fe while you’re sitting in Uval- de discussing the massacre of children,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat who repre- sents El Paso, where a gunman killed 23 people in a Walmart in

sources. “People need to understand that in the aftermath of the Santa Fe shootings, I signed 17 laws to address school safety,” Abbott said. But Abbott abandoned support for a suggestion in the report that lawmakers consider approv- ing a “red flag” law, which would authorize police or family mem- bers to petition a court for remov- al of a firearm from someone considered a threat. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), an adamant gun rights supporter, strongly op- posed that measure. Although the telehealth program has expanded to more school districts since 2018, it is not being used in Uvalde, according to the Texas Tech Uni- versity department that admin- isters it. “You’re always going to have, no matter what you do, someone to find another area that’s vulner- able,” Patrick said. “But the legislature did act. The governor signed those bills.” The school safety plan had “good ideas in it,” said Nicole Golden, executive director of Tex- as Gun Sense, the only statewide advocacy organization for gun

to firearms, pointing out that resi-
dents 18 and older have been
legally allowed to buy long guns —
a category that includes the style
of gun used in the Uvalde shooting
— for more than 60 years.
“During that time ... we have
not had episodes like this,” Ab-
bott said. “Why is it that in the
majority of those 60 years, we did
not have school shootings and
why do we have them now? I
really don’t have the answer to
that question.”
Abbott defended his record
during an appearance near the
shooting site with top aides and
Republican lawmakers, who
sought to demonstrate a united
front amid the investigation into
the rampage. At one point, Ab-
bott was interrupted by Beto
O’Rourke, the Democratic guber-
natorial nominee. He accused the
governor of having failed to stem
gun violence.
“You are doing nothing!”
O’Rourke shouted, before being
escorted out of the venue by
police.
Authorities have identified the
gunman as Salvador Ronaldo Ra-
mos, 18, who they said shot his
grandmother before entering
Robb Elementary School. Ramos
had legally purchased a pair of
semiautomatic rifles recently,
they said.
Ramos, who was killed by po-
lice at the school, had no criminal
record and left no forewarning of
the attack other than a few social
media messages about 30 min-
utes before he reached the site,
authorities said.
Abbott speculated that Ramos
probably suffered from mental
illness — although he said au-
thorities found no mental health
record — and he called on politi-
cal leaders to do more to address
mental health.
Responding to questions from
reporters over his response to
past incidents, Abbott pointed to
a 2018 attack at Santa Fe High
School in the Houston area,
where a 17-year-old student killed
eight classmates and two teach-
ers. In the aftermath, the gover-
nor convened a task force —
composed of parents, teachers,
law enforcement, students and
advocacy groups — that pro-
duced the 40-recommendation
school safety and firearm plan, to
which Abbott pledged to devote
$110 million.
Lawmakers passed several
school safety measures the fol-
lowing year that included in-
creasing law enforcement on
campus and arming more school
personnel, and trying to prevent
threats by identifying potentially
dangerous students and connect-
ing them with a telehealth coun-
seling program, among other ef-
forts to boost mental health re-

GUN LAWS FROM A

Abbott faces criticism over firearms after latest massacre

SERGIO FLORES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, disrupts a news conference held by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) at Uvalde High School on Wednesday. “You are doing nothing!” O’Rourke shouted before being escorted out of the venue by police.

not enough to deter the shooter. During that period, it found only two cases where a school police officer gunned down a shooter. Odis Johnson, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, said many of the proposals now echo those that were tried in the wake of other school shootings. “What happened after Park- land is what happened before Parkland. We continue to believe that law enforcement within schools was the only way that we could ensure the safety of kids within U.S. schools,” Johnson said. “Data are showing that has not been an adequate response.” He added that there’s been a steady rise in the number of people injured or killed by guns on school grounds that the growth in campus law enforcement has failed to curtail.” The Uvalde case raises questions about just how many police officers or security officers it would take to stop a shooter like Ramos, who wore a bulletproof vest and carried a rifle so power-

ful it rendered those shot unrec- ognizable. “Over and over - from Parkland to El Paso to Dayton to Uvalde - armed personnel on site couldn’t stop mass shooters who only needed minutes for mass slaugh- ter,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Newtown, Conn., is where 20 children were gunned down in an elementary school in 2012. The frequency of school shootings in the United States has spawned a whole industry of school security companies, which hawk bulletproof backpacks, bal- listic whiteboards, tourniquets and programs that train former Special Operations officers to guard schools, a market that had grown to $2.7 billion in 2018, the year that a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 people — including 14 students. It also led to a massive expan- sion of school police officer programs, with the federal govern- ment pouring millions into grants to pay for armed officers.

ALLISON DINNER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Some politicians are advocating for “hardening” schools, making schools more like airports.

“Why is it that in

the majority of those

60 years, we did not

have school shootings

and why do we have

them now? I really

don’t have the answer

to that question.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), noting at a news conference that the state has allowed the sale of long guns for more than 60 years

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-26)

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