Reply to For everyone insisting MCPS reinstate SROs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Mass shootings are less than 1% of violence and there are evidence based ways to reduce those. That doesn’t include an SRO although there is significant data showing SRO presence reduces the number of killed.

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Mass shootings (planned, indiscriminate attacks) may be less than 1% of "violence" but I would like to know what percent of in-school murders they represent, for one. I don't think it's nearly as low. For two, I have found no significant data showing SRO presence reduces the number killed in a mass shooting, and not for lack of trying. Please share yours. What I have found is data showing the exact opposite. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2776515 The kind of shooter who comes to school intending to kill indiscriminately is not deterred by an SRO/armed guard, because they know full well they're unlikely to get out alive and are often suicidal anyway. I know this is a comparatively rare scenario, and I take comfort in that, but I find the fact that they ever happen completely intolerable and want very much to take action that is [i]actually helpful[/i], and if SROs actually increase the danger to students in these scenarios just by existing in the school with a weapon that the shooter can fantasize about dying in a shootout with, then no thank you.
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The absence of an SRO doesn’t mean a school shooter wouldn’t die in a shoot-out with police. The police will come to him. It just might take a while. Although the presence of an SRO oddly doesn’t seem to change that amount of time.

Other than that, I don’t really disagree with anything you said. But there seemed to be an implicit belief that SROs are primarily there to deal with school shootings. I haven’t seen any compelling evidence to suggest they help, nor have I seen convincing evidence that they hurt.

What I think John Oliver got right is that a large part of the problem is the criminalization of behavioral incidents at schools. But that’s tangential to SROs, as far as I can tell. While there appears to be a general trend towards criminalization in schools, is there good reason to think that’s actually accelerated by the presence of SROs? Or is the presence of SROs instead the response to an increased desire by school administrators to have the police handle behavioral issues? Because if it's the latter, SROs could serve as important checks-and-balances against administrators, assuming they could be trained to push back on ridiculous requests for arrests.[/quote]

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