zxcvbob said:
"The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun..." was a horrible line...
It was a great line because it's true and everybody knows it,
they are just in denial -- and it begs the question, Is stopping the bad guy the real objective?
I'm not so sure it was a "great" line, but it is true. However, you put your finder on the key isse with the word "denial," and none other than Lt. Colonel David Grossman happens to agree with you. Some while before sandy Hook, and before Aurora, he addressed a symposium of police officers in California and "denial" was the exact word he used. And he -- and you -- was correct. School (and mall, and ___) security is a joke because the people who ultimately have the responsibility and who make the decisions only pay lip service to "security," because they really believe that "it can't happen here."
Sandy Hook Elementary School had a security plan -- doors locked at 9:30, after that anyone who wants in has to be buzzed in. SO WHAT? If a stranger presses the doorbell and has six handguns and an AK-47 hidden under his coat -- whoever is inside is going to do what? OPEN THE DOOR. So Mr. Schoolshooter walks in, pulls out his blaster, and starts shooting. If there isn't someone inside who is armed and prepared to engage Mr. Schoolshooter, the buzzer system is WORSE than a joke, because it conveys a false sense of security. It's like gluing fake sprinkler heads to the ceiling.
But -- at Sandy Hook the doors were glass, or they had glass sidelights. So even if Adam Lanza wasn't buzzed in (and it appears that he was not), all he had to do was shoot out the glass, reach through the opening, and open the door. (It appears that's what he did.)
So the "security" plan was in reality about as "secure" as locking your house door at night and leaving the key on nail next to the outside doorknob.
Example: In 2005 I was hired as a consultant to review the plans for a large high school addition and alterations project. These were supposed to be the final construction plans -- the project had been in design for at least two or three years, so it was begun shortly after Columbine and security was purportedly a very high priority.
Really?
The front doors were (and still are) all glass. The answer to that was, at the time, that the security office just inside the front entrance was to be manned by an armed school resource officer. Not a great answer, but sort of what we're back to discussing today. Okay, they get a bye on that one. (Of course, since Federal funding for police in schools dried up several years ago the security desk is no longer manned by an armed police officer, and the front doors are still all glass, but let's keep moving.)
In the existing wings, the corridor walls were all concrete block and the classroom doors were solid wood. (They probably had narrow vision lights, but I don't recall.) The new wings, however, were planned to have glass sidelights next to the doorknob sides of all the classroom doors. I had been informed that the security protocol was to include a lockdown procedure, so I had to ask: What good is it going to do if you lock the doors and give the intruder a glass panel right next to the doorknob that he can shoot/smash and just open the door? The architect's response? "We like the glass. It provides a sense of openness to the classrooms."
In other words:
DENIAL! "We aren't really concerned about security, we're just going through the motions because if we don't we'll be criticized. But we don't really have to worry about a shooter in OUR school."
It got worse. Does anyone know how classroom door locks work? There's a very legitimate concern that if the lock was like the one on the front door of your house, a teacher might step into the corridor and the kids could lock him/her out. So a classroom lock can ONLY be locked or unlocked with a key -- there's no button or thumbturn on the inside. Remember, the security plan for this school includes lock-down in case of an intruder.
Me: Do you ever have substitute teachers?
School: Of course.
Me: Do the substitutes get the key to the classroom where they'll be teaching?
School: Oh, no. The custodian opens the classroom for them.
See where we're going with this?
Me: Do you have any teachers who "float"?
School: Oh, yes, we have several.
Me: Do they get a key to each room they'll be teaching in?
School: No, each teacher has the key to his or her home room.
So this public high school had (and still has today) a security plan calling for locking down the classrooms, but they have NO PROVISION for giving a key to the classroom to a substitute teacher or to "floater" teachers who go from one classroom to another. This was just a few years after Columbine, they talked about Columbine and the need for security all the time ... but something as basic as giving teachers the key to the classroom had never occurred to them.
They weren't alone. I watched a video of an interview with a teacher's aide from Sandy Hook. She said when she and her teacher realized they were hearing gunshots and should lock the door, she looked at the teacher and the teacher said she didn't have a key to the door. Thankfully, a custodian came down the corridor and locked the doors, but what if the custodian hadn't been there, or had been shot ... or just plain hadn't dared to do what he did? IMHO, if there's any single person at Sandy Hook who deserves a medal, it's that unnamed custodian who was brave enough to be out in the corridor when everyone else was hiding, locking the classroom doors to try to protect the kids.
DENIAL! Sandy Hook had a security plan that was devised to stop honest people, and nothing more.
[/rant mode]
