Sebastien DUVAL -
At the entrance to Sidney High School in small-town Ohio, there is a poster which reads: “Inside this building, our children are protected by an armed and trained response team.” In rural Shelby County, law enforcement trained some teachers to fight back, should an attacker threaten students. They were among the first in the United States to embrace the controversial strategy.
On Halloween, as high school students and staff roam the hallways, John Pence — a firearm on his belt — patrols calmly. He is a full-time resource officer, assigned to ensure security at Sidney High. That arrangement has become commonplace across the country, as the number of school shootings has multiplied.
But he has back-up: the response team of armed teachers, who have volunteered for the job.
So far, about 15 US states have approved similar set-ups, but many are not happy about putting weapons in the hands of educators.
Pence rejects the usual arguments, saying: “In some areas, probably it might not work — maybe in a city. But most of these employees have been exposed to some type of firearms training beforehand.” One Sidney teacher, who cannot be named in order to protect the confidential nature of the armed response team, is indeed one such case. He is an avid hunter.
He says he had “no fears, no hesitations” about joining the effort to safeguard the school — even if that means that one day he could find himself faced with the prospect of shooting at one of his students.
“That’s one of those boxes that mentally you can have to check,” he said. “I have a wife and I have kids so if anybody is going to try to do any harm to them, this is what I’m going to do — this is what has to be done if it’s a student that is causing the threat.
“The other students being threatened, they have the right to go home to their parents that night too.”
The idea of arming teachers — the “programme” as those in Sidney call it — first surfaced after the Newtown shooting in 2012, in which 26 people, including 20 children, were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school.
The shooter also shot and killed his mother before taking
his own life.
After that horrific attack, Shelby County Sheriff John Lenhart says he realised how vulnerable the schools in his area were.
He pushed for new safety measures as he contemplated a hard truth: “The rule of thumb is after the first shot is fired, every 17 seconds after that, somebody dies. So you need an immediate response.” But he never suggested that teachers should give lessons or patrol the hallways with a firearm on their hips. — AFP
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