Given that limiting the access of would-be murderers to the weapons of war is, apparently, a bridge too far for the Republican Party, Republicans do not have many ideas for preventing American children from being murdered in their schools. The two they have largely settled on involve positioning more people with guns on school grounds; the notion is that the man with the AR-15 will be swiftly dealt with by either (1) your local social studies teacher, who gets a small yearly bonus for carrying a gun with him and Rambo-ing up the place when the fateful day comes or (2) positioning armed police officers in every school to do the same.
The first option is patently ridiculous, and is being largely treated as such. The second proposal is being peddled by currently not-indicted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose response to largely every problem as been the suggestion that we start arresting more people and that will fix things right up.
But it's not a panacea. Even presuming money can be squeezed out for full-time armed police officers to be stationed at schools currently struggling for textbooks, supplies, teachers, building improvements, and (in Oklahoma) even keeping the place open five days each week, there are some rather big problems with the plan.
A larger police presence may make schools appear safer, but studies that have examined whether school resource officers reduce violence have come to conflicting conclusions, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report. Although the report noted that schools with law enforcement officers were more likely to use those officers to mentor students, it also found a higher likelihood that students would be arrested for minor infractions. [...]
Students of color may not feel the same assurance of having more officers on school grounds as their white peers. Black students are 2.2 times more likely to be either referred to law enforcement or arrested at school than white students, according to Education Department civil rights data. That could lead to more students in criminal courts for misbehavior, pushing them into the justice system.
Parkland had the precise sort of school resource officer Sessions is promoting, and he wasn't able to intervene. He was across campus. He was also outgunned. Columbine High School, in Colorado, had an armed officer on scene at the time; twelve students and a teacher were killed nonetheless. The presence of officers does not seem to have a deterrent effect on shooters, and it's extremely likely that placing those officers elsewhere in the community would do more to promote community safety than stationing them permanently at, of all places, a school. It is more a symbolic gesture than a practical one, which one presumes is why "gun rights" activists are so eager to propose it.
It's that second bit that's troubling to many civil rights groups, though. When police officers are stationed in schools, there is a tendency to turn school discipline and other problems into police problems. And those efforts, as with most decisions involving schoolchildren and discipline, show substantial racial bias.
“It was presented as a way of protecting students from people coming in from outside,” says Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “It inevitably turned into a situation where the role of a school resource officer became more involved with what’s going on in the school. Increasingly, non-criminal activity was treated as criminal activity by the school resource officer. Kids were being arrested for things that they were not previously arrested for.”
This is not likely to be of concern to Jeff Sessions, as he proposes this impractically expensive, dubiously effective plan of tossing law enforcement officers inside your children's school and calling the whole thing done. But it should be of concern to the rest of us.