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April 19, 2016 05:03 PM UTC

ICYMI: What the Hell Are You Doing, Douglas County?

  • 66 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As FOX31 Denver reports:

The Douglas County School District has purchased 10 long rifles for its armed security officers.

The Bushmaster long rifles will not be housed on school grounds. They will be locked up at the district security office and bus depot along Highway 85.

“The weapons currently every day will be inside of a locked safe in a secured room inside the security department. They’ll be deployed into a locking mechanism that is inside our patrol vehicles very similar to the locking mechanisms that are inside law enforcement patrol vehicles and they will only be deployed if there is a situation where they need to be deployed,” Director of Safety and Security Rich Payne said.

The long rifles and equipment cost the district $12,300.

What? Why? This is fucking insane.

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66 thoughts on “ICYMI: What the Hell Are You Doing, Douglas County?”

  2. If it saves one kid's life from a future Harris or his ilk, it will be money incredibly well spent.  Frankly, I root for the cops against the Lanzas or other murderers — every time..  That may mean I am in the minority, but I seriously doubt it   But if it was your kid in that Aurora theatre, or other place where mad killers prey, I think you might wish that a cop was handy with weaponry adequate to kill the gunmen before he kills more victims. 

      1. Exactly…..isn't the ammosexual selling point that there is safety when good guys have easy access to guns? So shouldn't they be distributed to good guys?

        1. Depends on the definition of good guy, frank.  I mean trained police officers and you bet your sweet ass I want them fully armed.  Just some NRA doofus with illusions of competence is more likely to shoot a cop than a crook.

      4. It's ten guns.  And that 12 k is a one time capital expense.  A very small expense compared to the open ended cataract of cash devoted to the mid- level bureaucray.  It might provide one more useless test to ten kids.

      5. Not true according to the story.  The central storage is for when the guns are not with patrol cars.  I know it is standard liberal logic to argue that we should never shoot back at mad dog killers because they are really only misunderstood victims of society.  I doubt, however, that survivors of Sandy Hook or columbine would agree.  What is "fucking insane" as you so elegantly put it, is your horror of trying tostop mass murderers from doing their mass murderer thing.  Hint: the cops are not the bad guys.  The bad guys are the bad guys.

        1. "I doubt, however, that survivors of Sandy Hook or columbine would agree."

          Uh, you might want to ask some, many of whom have been advocating for LESS GUNS for a decade or more. 

          1. If you can seriously find a survivor whoadvocates disarming the cops, I might think you hVe a point .  I actually know a lot of survivors.  Theyvwant to take guns away from the bad guys.  Are you actuLly dumb enough to believe that disarming cops and only cops is the key to reducing mass violence.  One of my daughters closest friends is conie sanders, gaughter of hero teacher dave sanders.  She wants it harder for bad guys to get guns, but easier for trained, well armed professionals to stopbad guys.  I think I value her advice over your belief that disarming cops will save lives which is a very stupid thing to say, frankly.

             

            1. Just who the fuck, besides you, said anything — one word — about taking guns away from cops?  (Moderatus has been missing, you keeping him in your pocket?)

              Jesus H Buddha, Veeg — even straw men with guns are still, you know, just straw …

              2. Big time made ecactly that argument, dio.  He says the answer is less guns and he doesn't exclude the cops.  I say he is an idiot.  I want the cops to have whatever they need.  Disarm the perps.

                  1. Hardly.  His entire outrage is directly sole ly to the fact that eight cops — school security cops anyway — would be given access to rifles and training to use them .  For that matter, you seem pretty upset by the thought yourself.  So, what is wrong with arming cops..? Or should we just disarm them entirely?  If there is a possibility they will encounter sandy hook/ columbine killers with semi auto matic assault rifles, should we constder giving the cops the weapons and training to help them cope with such killers?  And in the process save the lives of our kids?  Or is it "fucking insane" -to do anything to stop mass murderers?  I think those who want to disarm the cops are the insane ones.

                    1. V…so far I have seen no one on this thread suggest disarming cops…WTF are you talking about?

                    2. Not going there, not going to argue from your ridiculous assertion that less guns would mean disarming law enforcement in anyway …

                      … and, I'm not go to insist that the "logical conclusion" or your position would be that you're in favor of arming every schoolchild (although I'm pretty sure that Dudley and the NRA could find an upside), even though a close analog to what you've done argumentatively.

                      Maybe, I'd like to see a bit of reason applied to this issue, and my position on this one particular action is that it's not reasonable to accomplish anything, has at least as much if not more downside than upside, is a grandstanding gesture that feeds the harmful, and didlroven, canard that more guns = more safety in every instance. 

                    3. Let's come back to reality – putting more guns into a school system increases the chance guns are misused or stolen, that's just plain and simple physics. If there are no guns, there is no chance they can be stolen or misused. If there are guns, that opens the door to all sorts of unintended consequences:

                      http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/investigations/sheriffs-brother-admits-to-taking-guns-from-evidence-locker

                      LINCOLN COUNTY, Colo. – The brother of the Lincoln County sheriff is accused of taking weapons from the evidence locker. Even after he confessed, it took more than eight months for the charges to be filed.

                      Dustin Zane Nestor is facing eight felony counts, including two counts of second-degree burglary and two counts of embezzlement of public property.

                      http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/investigations/sheriffs-brother-admits-to-taking-guns-from-evidence-locker

                    4. Still no editor?!? GFD!!!

                      Hey, Alva, … how about opening up an old Soapbox that's been stuck back in the shelf?? …

                      … or upgrading away from this WordPress POS!!??!!  You're gonna' love Windows 98 once you get there — the 90's are gonna' be great, Clintons, flying cars …

                       

                2. Voyageur – calm down. How many comments are you going to make here? 

                  Hyper-enthusiasm for guns is one reason people don't trust people with guns.

          2. I am willing to bet you have never met an actual school shooting victim big time.  I have.  Not one ever was stupid enough to urge disarming the cops who saved them.  Only you want that.

            1. Voyageur – if your wild and out of control comments are representative of those who think having 10 semi-auto rifles in DoCo is a good idea, we're in deeper trouble than I realized. 

              You're having a conversation with yourself – putting words in other people's mouths and then responding to those words with more wild accusations. 

              Seriously, you might want to step away from the keyboard and go for a run, clear the mind and then read your comments and ask yourself if you need to see a doctor. 

      1. Not true, pseudo.  I assume the central storagebis for when they arn't deployed.  The story is clearly inartfully worded.  But it talks about central storage and deployment in cars.  The security guys tran 

        1. I know this because guns are stolen:

          Nearly 200,000 guns were reported lost or stolen last year, according to federal data.

          The following table shows the number of guns reported stolen and the number of guns reported missing in National Crime Information Center for 2012. Statistics include firearms reported stolen by private individuals and Federal Firearms Licensees.

          http://www.governing.com/gov-data/stolen-guns-lost-firearms-by-state-data.html

           

  3. $12,300 to buy five guns that'll be locked in a safe in an administration building somewhere. Abso-freakin'-lutely ridiculous. An insult to so many causes that could effectively use that money for the benefit of the District's kids.

  4. The purchase of 10 semiautomatic guns for safety officers in Douglas County School District is largely a symbolic move – less than 1% of the district's Safety budget. Nevertheless, it's a symbol catering to the fantasies of gun fanciers, rather than being a positive step towards school safety, in my opinion.

    The $12,000 for semiautomatic guns is a miniscule part of the $2.6 million Dougco Safety Department budget. (p 310 of the DougCO budget). "Supplies and materials" were $128,000 of the DougCO safety budget in 2015-16.

    The Dougco district would be better off hiring more counselors – it's ratio of counselors to students is 1 to 900. School shooters tend to be isolated, alienated angry people in crisis – more counselors and psychologists would be able to work with these folks on their issues. But Douglas County right now is only hiring 3 additional counselors  with its 600 million dollar budget for all of its 80 schools.

    Most school shooters are students or alumni. It's rare to have a complete stranger come in and shoot up an educational institution. The unifying characteristic of school shooters is that they are involved with schools.

    Schools need counselors, psychologists, threat assessment teams, more adults in the classroom in general. They also need hardware, like functioning cameras, high speed internet, and maybe even better guns and training for their security personnel.

    But the hardware will do a piss-poor job of preventing violence. Only caring people connecting with troubled kids can do that. Douglas County, it seems, has yet to figure that out.

     

     

     

     

  5. This is an idiotic precedent. Sure, it's a drop in the bucket in the DougCo school system budget, but the seed has no been planted and this is nothing more than another escalation in the number of guns out in public and the idea that the solution to this problem is MORE GUNS – stop the insanity!

     

    2. Do you want to totally disarm all police, when is the logical cocclusion to your rantings.  Or would you only require school security to be unarmed.

  6. I'm really confused by the deployment piece.  Are the weapons kept in secure central facilities or are they being deployed with school security in their vehicles all the time.  Because only one of those is possible.

    If it's the former, then what good are they?  SWAT and local PD can deploy faster that the school squad, and those folks train with these weapons regularly.  If it's the latter, do the security folks sit in the cars all day?  If not, how do they even (a) know they will be able to get to the car and arm themselves, and (b) that the car isn't where crazy #2 is waiting to pop them, grab the keys to their super secure locking mechanism, and use their weapons at the party?

    Regardless of whether these guys should be using these weapons, how are they even planning to be able to use them?

  7. Obviously, you are wrong to claim they are either deployed all the time or stored all the time.  The story is poorly written but obviously says they will be stored centrally when they aren't being deployed.

    1. Which is to say, they're deployed to the patrol vehicle whenever a trained safety officer goes on-duty – or at least 8 of them are. The other two sit in central storage all the time because there are only 8 safety folks.

    2. "Stored centrally" – also know as gift wrapped for anyone looking to steal 10 assault rifles:

       

      PARKER, Colo. — Two young men from Elizabeth face serious criminal charges after police said they stole more than 40 firearms from a home in Parker.

      Casey Riedel, 20, and Jacob Whitlock, 18, were arrested Sunday and charged with burglary.

      Police pulled the pair over after a neighbor called 911 to report suspicious activity. The caller said the suspects were standing at the gate of their neighbor’s house for a while, then went into the backyard. The homeowners were away on vacation.

      http://kdvr.com/2016/04/05/police-recover-40-guns-stolen-from-parker-home-2-arrested/

      1. The derp is strong in this one.  Just where is the equivalency in bringing up articles about firearms being stolen from private residences, or private vehicles, when talking about firearms being centrally stored (which means either an arms room with weapons lockers or gun safes)?  

        Not saying that this is the best use of resources by DougCo's security staff, but the risk of the weapons being stolen is pretty damn low on the probability scale.

  8. I wouldn't want my child attending a Douglas County School – it's horrible to think that any child would see these guns and law enforcement. Equally bad or worse, the district took money from education for weapons. I believe in protecting our children from predators but there is a sane limit. DC school board members should be psychologically evaluated for sanity and fitness for office. 

    1. The school board did not make the decision.  Good to know that you don't want your kids tosee an armed law enforcement officer.  I suggest if you ever face a home invasion you will call a hippie?

        1. According to the washington post, the eight are all retired police officers who now work for Douglas County schools.  The schools also employ 56 other Security personnel, none of whom are armed , even with pistols.  The post says more than 100 colleges now arm their campus cops with rifles .  Dougco isn't the first K-12 district to follow though that is less common.

           

          1. Ah! So now you're talking about spending thousands more for salaries and benefits – way beyond the cost of rifles. Before the district had an arrangement with local and county law enforcement to patrol the schools periodically on a daily basis – and these agencies were compensated by the district. 

            1. You have no idea what you are talking about.  The 8 armed and 56 unarmed security people already work for douglas schools.  If you do the math, you fi d that is less than one per thousand students.  But we have already established that you don't do math.  Otherwise, cite a source for your out of left field claim.

              1. You are ignorant of the facts – the law enforcement officers actually wore uniforms that were benign and friendly looking to children. Do YOUR RESEARCH. I have photos of those officers. And DO YOUR MATH homework — the figures were posted in the school district budgets. DO NOT INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE. You need to do your homework. How dare you ever make a comment like this on anyone's post.

        1. Thanks, thank you. Yeah, I actually was a reporter who covered this issue of law enforcement in Douglas County – and their budgets. So I just can't believe people are so naive – but I want to say stupid. Thanks again to you. Not really worth my blood pressure rising, right? Smiles.

      3. Trained law enforcement or not, they are still human and can make mistakes and even break the law themselves:

         

        Leadville – The arrest affidavit for former Police Chief Michael Leake identifies what appears to be a complex embezzlement scheme that included several efforts to keep city officials off his trail as he continued to sell firearms belonging to the Leadville Police Department.

         

        http://www.themountainmail.com/free_content/article_ded0fd7e-0253-11e6-b6f2-e3527fe0d4ad.html

  10. Putting more guns into a school system means more chance they are stolen or misused versus used successfully to thwart a school shooting – it might make people irrationally feel better, but more likely, they will not stop a school shooting and they very well could end up in the wrong hands:
     

     

    GLENDALE – On March 28, a rifle and over 200 rounds of 223/5.56 ammunition were stolen from a party at an apartment in the City of Glendale.

    According to Glendale Police, the rifle is a Knight's Armament Rifle with a serial number of # KM909090. It was allegedly fitted with a Trijicon ACOG optical sight. 

    A photo of what the rifle and optical sight look like is below.

    Glendale Police spokesperson Mike Gross said a 16-year-old East High School student had a party in the 4500 block of Cherry Creek Drive South while his dad was out of town. Fewer than 20 people attended, according to police.

    Gross said, as often happens with high school parties, the invite list got out of hand. Only East HS students were invited at first, Gross says, but then, those students invited other people and others who do not go to East HS showed up. 

    http://www.9news.com/news/crime/more-than-200-rounds-rifle-stolen-from-high-school-party/128498187

    1. So you seriously believe that in a country with more than 200,000,ooo guns, the only possible way a shooter can get a gun is too steal it from a cop.  Great logic.  Of course, you examples are mostly stolen privately owned guns.  There are, by the way, 56 Douglas County school security people who are not armed, even with pistols.

      1. Math is not your friend, apparently. 

        There are 400 mil guns in private ownership, thanks to idiotic thinking that uses a Hollywood fiction to legislate and make policy — good guys killing bad guys with guns happens in Clint Eastwood movies every time. But that does not mean that also happens in reality. If you don't believe that, go talk to an empty chair, because no one wants to hear it. 

        1. So that's your story and you're sticking to it.  The only way a criminal can get a gun is to steal it from  cop.  If a criminal is killing people, the cops can't shoot at him because that is, justbwrong Nd in any event you hate clintveastwood.  Are you buying your stupid pills from Costco?  You sure bneed those big containers.

  11. According to 9news:

    The rifles are not in the hands of armed security guards yet. They will have to go through 20 hours of training with the DougCo Sheriff’s Department and then qualify with the weapon. Five of the 10 guns could be issued in a month.

    http://www.9news.com/news/education/douglas-county-school-district-buys-10-long-rifles/141516138

    So, in addition to the cost of the 10 guns, there is the cost of training. 

     

    The schools do not need to waste all of this money this way when there are perfectly good police and sheriff services in their areas, in addition to their own armed personnel. 

    The purchase is unnecessary at best and appears to be based on an unrealistic threat assessment.  Pistols are sufficient for taking out most shooters.  Rifles are not needed. 

     

    1. Agree with you. And now, we are talking about assault rifles, training, salaries and benefits —- thousands of dollars taken away from teachers educating our students. My child loved school until attending high school on the US Air Force Academy grounds after 9-11 when suddenly there were rifles and security everywhere which instilled fear every single day in these kids. So… everyone can talk, but I listen to children who have lived through this situation and it is very, very unsettling. This is not an Amendment Two issue -it’s about creating a healthy but safe environment for educating children – not scaring the hell out of them on a daily basis.

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