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Illinois School District Allows Students to Opt Out of “Active Shooter Drills”

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Parents Fear of Children Being Traumatized

Illinois Public Media
(September 10, 2019)

A Champaign Illinois school district is allowing students to be excused from school to avoid experiencing “active shooter drills” held on school grounds.

“The Champaign Unit 4 Board of Education clarified how parents can opt their students out of active shooter drills” at a September 9 meeting, Illinois Public Media reports. 

A new state law requires students participate in at least one active shooter drill during the first 90 days of the school year. The law allows school staff to exempt certain students from the drill at their discretion. 

Unit 4 board members opted to take the advice of the district’s legal counsel, and allow parents to take their children out of school during the drills, exempt students who are already exempted from fire and tornado drills, and provide accommodations for students with individualized education plans.

Parents at the meeting expressed concerns that the drills could traumatize both students and staff. Dianne Gordon, a Unit 4 parent, told board members that her seven-year-old daughter was “hysterical” following a hard lockdown drill at her elementary school last year. 

Orlando Thomas, director of achievement and student services at Unit 4, explained that parents would be informed ahead of time when the drills would occur at each school building. 

“I think we’ve done a lot to try to help the adults ease their reservation about the training,” Thomas said.

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Why Schools Should End Active Shooter Drills Immediately

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Evan Gerstmann
Forbes
(September 7, 2019)

School shooters represent a minuscule fraction of the risk to America’s schoolchildren. According to a 2018 Washington Post editorial, “the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000.” According to a recent article in The Atlantic: “The Washington Post has identified fewer than 150 people (children and adults) who have been shot to death in America’s schools since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, in Colorado. Not 150 people a year, but 150 in nearly two decades.”

Nonetheless, 96% of America’s schools conduct lockdown drills meant to protect students from active shooters. These are required by state or local law in most cases.

The inordinate attention paid to a phenomenon that represents such a tiny proportion of the danger to school kids (a drop in the bucket compared to the danger they face from car accidents for example) can only be justified if one assumes that the psychological impact of these shootings on students is disproportionately great. But what if these lockdown drills are actually what is creating most of the anxiety?

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US Classrooms Being Equipped with “Lockdown/Shelter in Place Buckets”

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Used For Emergency Supplies, Relief

The “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” has reached a new nadir under corporate police state control. Walmart is among the entities behind a program to equip public schools with five gallon capacity “safety” or “lockdown” buckets for readiness in the event the facility’s inhabitants undergo martial law for an extended period of time. Taking a page from “preppers” often lampooned in major media, the vessels will be stocked with first aid supplies and foodstuffs, and can even be used as latrines.

The idea of “shelter in place buckets” was floated shortly after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland Florida on February 14, 2018, as the video below suggests.

Louisiana’s WAFB carries the syndicated story attributed to CNN:

With classroom shootings on the minds of many, one Michigan high school is trying to make their students feel safer.

Heidi Hummel and her classmates are gearing up for their senior year at Clio High School, but back-to-school prep has taken a more somber tone after recent school shootings.

This year at Clio, every classroom will have what’s called a “safety bucket.”

“We are unloading them and using them in the event, if we ever needed them, for a lock down,” Hummel said. “And we can have them for food and supplies if we were ever locked down for a long time.”

The buckets will go into every classroom in the school district. Assistant Principal Kevin Ayre said the school needs the public’s help to fill the buckets with potentially life-saving supplies.

“They’re going to be filled with gauze, bandages, water – you know, necessities in the situation where we have to be in a long-term lockdown,” Ayre said.

Walmart donated at least 144 of the buckets, and students and faculty said they’re great because in the case of an emergency they could use them as bathrooms as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIpvBvTFLXs

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Parkland School Resource Officer Receives $8,702 Monthly Pension

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In April Broward County Sheriff and Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Resource Officer Scot Peterson began receiving monthly pension payments of $8,702, after resigning from his position less than two weeks after the February 14 school shooting.

Peterson was publicly chastised by Sheriff Scott Israel and President Donald Trump for allegedly failing to confront purported Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz.

Peterson and his attorney later defended the actions, arguing that Peterson was being “unfairly attacked” and pointing out that Israel “omitted” important information while scapegoating the deputy in the event’s aftermath.

According to the Sun-Sentinel,

The 55-year-old Peterson, a Broward deputy for 32 years, was paid $101,879.03 last year — $75,673.72 in base salary plus overtime and other compensation, according to sheriff’s office records. Until the shooting, he was considered a trusted school resource officer at Stoneman Douglas, according to annual reviews of his performance.

He was eligible to retire from the agency in July 2010 when he had 25 years of service, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said Wednesday.

On Feb. 14, surveillance video showed Peterson waiting outside the school as Cruz prowled the halls with an AR-15 rifle. President Donald Trump branded Peterson a coward, and Sheriff Scott Israel began an investigation into his actions. Israel said Peterson should have “went in. Addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”

The retired Broward deputy’s monthly payouts do not include medical benefits. An investigation of Peterson’s response to the shooting is ongoing, a spokesperson for the Broward Sheriff’s office said.

 

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Police Respond to Errant Popcorn Maker Incident with Guns Drawn

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Editor’s Note: Yesterday afternoon our family dropped off our 12-year-old daughter and some of her friends off at the local movie theatre.  A short while later we were driving by the same location to run an errand and saw several police cars parked at the theatre entrance as
movie-goers and theatre staff were apparently being evacuated to the parking lot.

We phoned our daughter and she explained they had indeed been evacuated … because of a malfunctioning popcorn maker. As the report below reveals, she too observed police officers arriving at the scene with guns drawn and inspecting the full perimeter of the theatre complex in the same fashion. This is because, according to the police department’s Twitter feed, “[s]omeone pulled the fire alarm and reported they heard shots fired.”

Such is the paranoia and attendant police responses to everyday menaces like burnt popcorn the land of compulsory active shooter drills and the USA 21st century police state.

According to the PalmBeachPost,

Police say they evacuated the Cinemark Palace 20 movie theater in Boca Raton Saturday afternoon after a popcorn maker triggered a fire alarm.

Boca Raton police cleared the theater at 3200 Airport Road, near Glades Road and Interstate 95, around 5 p.m. after the fire alarm sounded and some people reported what they believed were gunshots.

Officers who responded to the theater approached the building with weapons drawn, a witness said, unnerving moviegoers. (emphasis added)

But after evacuating the theater and searching it, police reported on Twitter that there was “no indication of shots fired at this time.”

Esmeralda Romero said she was in the theater when the alarm went off but wasn’t concerned until police showed up with weapons in their hands.

“I thought it was just someone burned the popcorn,” she said. “Then the police showed up with their guns drawn. Management then came out and told us to leave.”

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Active Shooter/Hostile Event “Standard Response Guide” Released

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According to FBI statistics there have been 220 “active shooter events” between 2000 and 2016 nationwide, resulting in 661 deaths and 825 injuries. This averages out to around 13 such occurrences and 41 deaths annually.* Along these lines, around 27 Americans on average are killed by lightening each year.

The prospect of “active shooter events,” be they drills or authentic, causes many-a-sleepless night for anxious bureaucrats, and so they have banded together to produce a “the world’s first active shooter/hostile event response standard” to promote the preparedness of public officials and first responders alike. Dubbed NFPA 3000 (TM) the 48-page document can be purchased for $52 from the National Fire Protection Association.

“As more hostile events continue to occur,” the NFPA declares, “it is critical for law enforcement, first responders, emergency personnel, facility managers, hospital officials, community members and others to have the information they need to be prepared when attacks happen.”

The “program scope,” according to NFPA’s website,

is limited to the necessary functions and actions related to preparedness, response, and recovery from an active shooter/hostile event response (ASHER). This standard applies to any community, authority having jurisdiction (AHJ), facility, and member of any organization who responds to or prepares for ASHER incidents.

The guidelines were produced by “a 46-member committee,” and “included representatives from law enforcement, emergency medical services, private businesses, the department of Homeland Security the FBI and the Department of Justice,” the Kansas City Star reports.

Among the incidents this committee is said to have studied in formulating the nationwide standard were the

attacks at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando Florida, the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas (58 killed October 2017), Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (27 killed December 2012), the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisc. (6 killed August 2012) and the Boston Marathon (3 killed April 2013).

Each of the above events has various inexplicable features yet nevertheless have been widely reported as genuine by major news media. And the “attack” on the 2013 Boston Marathon was arguably incomparable to an active shooter situation yet resulted in a military-style lockdown of the entire Boston metro region.

*The definition of an “active shooter event”is of course greatly expanded for sensationalistic effect by organizations serving as gun control lobby fronts.
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Parkland Shooting Event Now Backdrop For Automated Security

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One may recall how over a decade ago the “Shoe” and “Underwear Bomber” operations provided the rationale for heightening security measures at the nation’s airports. Such efforts included harmful radiation-emitting full-body scanners and banning menacingly-large containers of shampoo and toothpaste.

A similar opportunity to cash in on tragedy appears to be taking shape in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting of February 14, 2018. Knightscope, a company founded after the Sandy Hook massacre by a former police officer, is now aggressively marketing its high-priced robots to school districts with the curious pitch that they will decrease the likelihood of an “active shooter” event.

In the prelude to the deployment of such devices, Knightscope has  permeated the educational process itself by introducing a contest encouraging students to submit essays explaining how they think robots will make them safer than conventional security protocols.

Continue reading Parkland Shooting Event Now Backdrop For Automated Security →

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