By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The student's attack began with a
shotgun blast through the windows of a California high school. Rich
Agundez, the El Cajon policeman assigned to the school, felt his mind
shift into overdrive.
People yelled at him amid the chaos but he didn't hear. He experienced "a tunnel vision of concentration."
While two teachers and three students were injured
when the glass shattered in the 2001 attack on Granite Hills High
School, Agundez confronted the assailant and wounded him before he could
get inside the school and use his second weapon, a handgun.
The National Rifle Association's response to a
Connecticut school massacre envisions, in part, having trained, armed
volunteers in every school in America. But Agundez, school safety
experts and school board members say there's a huge difference between a
trained law enforcement officer who becomes part of the school family -
and a guard with a gun.
The NRA's proposal has sparked a debate across the
country as gun control rises once again as a national issue. President
Barack Obama promised to present a plan in January to confront gun
violence in the aftermath of the killing of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary
School students and six teachers in Newtown, Conn.
Agundez said what happened before the shooting in the San Diego County school should frame the debate over the NRA's proposal.
With a shooting at another county school just weeks
before, Agundez had trained the staff in how to lock down the school,
assigned evacuation points, instructed teachers to lock doors, close
curtains and turn off the lights. He even told them computers should be
used where possible to communicate, to lessen the chaos.
And his training? A former SWAT team member,
Agundez' preparation placed him in simulated stressful situations and
taught him to evade a shooter's bullets. And the kids in the school knew
to follow his advice because they knew him. He spoke in their
classrooms and counseled them when they came to him with problems.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, school
boards, administrators, teachers and parents are reviewing their
security measures.
School security officers can range from the best
trained police officers to unarmed private guards. Some big city
districts with gang problems and crime formed their own police agencies
years ago. Others, after the murder of 13 people at Columbine High
School in 1999, started joint agreements with local police departments
to have officers assigned to schools - even though that was no guarantee
of preventing violence. A trained police officer at Columbine
confronted one of two shooters but couldn't prevent the death of 13
people.
"Our association would be uncomfortable with
volunteers," said Mo Canady, executive director of the National
Association of School Resource Officers - whose members are mostly
trained law enforcement officers who "become part of the school
family.'"
Canady questioned how police officers responding to
reports of a shooter would know whether the person with a gun is a
volunteer or the assailant.
Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, who also was a top
Homeland Security official and will head the NRA effort, said the
program will have two key elements.
One is a model security plan "based on the latest,
most up-to-date technical information from the foremost experts in their
fields." Each school could tweak the plan to its own circumstances, and
"armed, trained, qualified school security personnel will be but one
element."
The second element may prove the more controversial
because, to avoid massive funding for local authorities, it would use
volunteers. Hutchinson said in his home state of Arkansas, his son was a
volunteer with a local group "Watchdog Dads," who volunteered at
schools to patrol playgrounds and provide added security.
He said retired police officers, former members of the military or rescue personnel would be among those likely to volunteer.
There's even debate over whether anyone should have a gun in a school, even a trained law enforcement officer.
"In general teachers don't want guns in schools
period," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education
Association, one of the two large unions representing teachers. He added
that one size does not fit all districts and said the union has
supported schools that wanted a trained officer. Most teachers, he said,
do not want to be armed themselves.
"It's a school. It's not a place where guns should be," he commented.
The security situation around the country is mixed.
-The Snohomish School District north of Seattle got rid of its school officers because of the expense.
-The Las Vegas-based Clark County School District
has its own police department and places armed officers in and around
its 49 high school campuses. Officers patrol outside elementary and
middle schools. The Washoe County School District in Nevada also has a
police force, but it was only about a decade ago that the officers were
authorized to carry guns on campus.
-In Milwaukee, a dozen city police officers cover
the school district but spend most of their time in seven of the 25 high
schools. In Madison, Wis., an armed police officer has worked in each
of the district's four high schools since the mid-1990s.
-For the last five years, an armed police officer
has worked in each of the two high schools and three middle schools in
Champaign, Ill. Board of Education member Kristine Chalifoux said there
are no plans to increase security, adding, "I don't want our country to
become an armed police state."
-A Utah group is offering free concealed-weapons
permit training for teachers as a result of the Connecticut shootings.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne proposed a plan to allow one educator
in each school to carry a gun.
Ed Massey, vice chairman of the Boone County, Ky.,
school board and president of the National School Boards Association,
said his district has nine trained law enforcement officers for 23
schools and "would love to have one in every school."
"They bring a sense of security and have done
tremendous work in deterring problems in school," he said. "The number
of expulsions have dramatically decreased. We used to have 15 or 20 a
year. Now we have one or two in the last three years."
An officer, he said, "is not just a hired gun. They
have an office in the school. They are trained in crisis management,
handling mass casualties and medical emergencies."
He said a poster given out by the local sheriff's department shows one of the officers and talks about literacy and reading.
Kenneth Trump, president of the National School
Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said having trained
officers in schools is "more of a prevention program than a reactive
program if you have the right officers who want to work with kids."
But he also criticized a drop in funding for school
security, saying, "Congress and the last two administrations have
chipped away to the point of elimination of every program for school
security and emergency planning."
Dr. Ronald Stephens, executive director of the
National School Safety Center that provides training to schools, said
the NRA's suggestion of using volunteers "is a whole new concept of
school safety." He questioned whether the NRA wants to bring the best
sharpshooters on campus.
"How is that going to create a positive atmosphere for young people?" he asked. "How does that work on the prevention side?"
Agundez, 52, who retired as a policeman in 2010,
learned shortly before his retirement just how much his trained reaction
to a shooter affected students at Granite Hills High.
He was writing a traffic ticket and the driver's whole body started shaking. He had been a student that day nine years earlier.
"He gave me a hug," Agundez recalled. "He said 'I always wanted to thank you.' You saved our lives."
___
Associated Press writers Todd Richmond, Michael
Tarm, Greg Moore, Ken Ritter, Sandra Chereb and Donna Blankinship
contributed to this report.
___
Follow Larry Margasak on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/LarryMargasak
Copyright 2012 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
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