Friday, December 21, 2012

An excellent perspective on school security


I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the news media's accuracy, impartiality and objectivity, but I have to make an exception for this ABC News Nightline segment on school security.  It's very 'fair and balanced' - in fact, Fox News, which (in)famously uses that slogan, could learn some lessons from this report.  It's not long, and well worth watching.





Full marks to Nightline for some very good reporting.  I wish the same objectivity and fairness had been displayed by the rest of the news media over the Connecticut school shootings . . .

Peter

5 comments:

Bob S. said...

Security measures are great if everyone plays along with them.

Unless they upgrade to bullet resistant glass, shots through any of the plate glass windows makes their entry scheme useless.

Isn't that how Sandy Hook E.S. murderer gained entry?

B said...

Yep, a paper shield . The entrance is easily breached with anyone with a firearm or a baseball bat. Unless the glass really is reinforced with something.... not obvious in the video if that is the case.

Aaron C. de Bruyn said...

Bah--give it another 5 years and we'll be building schools like prisons. 24/7 surveillance, bullet-proof everything, locking isolated pods and sections complete with a monitoring center where people use touchscreen computers to control the traffic flow. Kids and visitors will be strip searched and be required to change into school uniforms (aka orange jumpsuits). It's only a matter of time.

Stuart Garfath said...

At least an effort is being made here, but one initial, major flaw seems to be that the first security camera does not show the whole of the body, I could not see what the visitor may, or may not, have been carrying, like a large carry bag for instance.

Shell said...

This is the text of a Facebook post I put up along with a link to this post. It's a bit wordy for a blog comment but I thought I'd post it for your consideration, Peter.

.............

I generally agree with Peter's assessment of the report. It's well done and fairly well-balanced.

The first question that came to my mind was partially answered. Seeing the security measures at the Chicago school I wondered of *all* the glass was bulletproof. Firstly because it just occurred to me but secondly because news reports said the CT attacker shot his way through a glass door or a window (haven't been able to in that one down) to get in.

The second question concerns the "school safety specialist" near the end who says, "If teachers and principals had guns I think a lot of innocent kids would be killed by the principals and the teachers trying to stop something ."

Based on what evidence? How many bystanders/innocents have been killed or wounded by an armed citizen who intervened in an armed encounter/attack? I can find no mention of any such. What I do find is many accounts of the attack on Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson trumpeting the part of the story where one of the armed citizens who intervened said he *almost* shot an armed man he saw when first coming upon the scene. Almost. The fact that he didn't is summarily dismissed as pure blind luck rather than a citizen making a conscious decision *not* to fire because he wasn't sure of his target. Almost all of them fail to mention the other armed citizens there who decided not to even draw their weapons for fear of hitting a bystander in the scrum around the shooter.

OK, slight digression done, here's my point. Every one of the people I've watched, listened to, or read say that they think, or more often feel, that an armed citizen would present a danger to innocent bystanders if they intervened in an attack bases it on nothing more than personal opinion, and that opinion is directly contradicted by all evidence.