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“A school lockdown drill in Winter Haven, Florida, angered parents whose children apparently texted in alarm, with one noting that a police officer with an assault rifle came into a classroom,” abcnews.go.com reports. “Initially, only three people knew the lockdown at Jewett Middle Academy on Thursday was only a drill, police said. Parents, teachers and students were not told in advance about the scheduled event because, the school district said, the element of surprise is vital to make the drill effective.” And there you have it: the only good reason not to arm teachers, administrators and school staff. They might shoot SWAT team members descending – unannounced – on schools. Only in the future, armed teachers may have the edge . . .

Polk County Public Schools spokesman Jason Geary said parents were sent an email from the school after the drill was complete and the incident is under review by the district’s Department of Safe Schools. The district has announced that it will continue to have unannounced drills but uniformed officers will not carry weapons during those drills.

PTA board member Heidi Calvelage, whose son is a seventh grader at Jewett Middle Academy, said she was surprised any parents were upset about the secrecy surrounding the “very necessary” drills.

As for the student apparently texting before the drills have concluded, Calvelage said, “they shouldn’t be using their cells in class in the first place.”

Right. Because we wouldn’t want students to think that they should communicate strategic information during an actual active shooter events. Morons.

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68 COMMENTS

  1. So not only does the kids fear some crazy person coming into the schools but now the police are running drills with out telling people, I am sorry they told three people and they all kept there mouth shut.

    • What would have happened if in a panic all of the students called 911? What if cops approached not realizing that it was a drill and shot the gunman? Why did PTA board member state that the students should not be using their cell phones? How does she expect someone to call 911 without their cellphones? I hope everyone responsible gets sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

  2. I’m actually happy about the school administration beclowning itself. The more insanity by school admins, the faster they will be taken down.

    • Kids are smarter than adults think. I’m pretty sure they know their teachers and school administrators are idiots.

  3. “uniformed officers will not carry weapons during those drills”

    So are they going to be using rifle length sticks painted black or what?

  4. I think the true goal of these “drills” is to permanently scare kids so that when they see AR15s they remember the traumatic experiences in the classroom. This is a classical Pavlovian association exercise. I can’t believe we let this continue.

  5. I’m probably not the only one here who will note the absolute ineffectiveness of having students huddled into a corner of a classroom. If anything, that would only make things easier for an active shooter. School administrators are clearly morons if they think that will help.

    Now have the same scenario, except the teacher can “return fire” with a paintball gun. Compare the two, huddling versus returning fire, and have liberals answer tough questions about their “Gun Free Zone” stance and refusal to allow teachers to be armed. I’d pay to see that.

    • Then add the part where the kids go out the back door(s) to friends houses, or to be picked up by parents after a text, while the school resource officer, armed and trained principal, and two or three other armed teachers and staff hold off the intruders.

      The way they teach it now “hide in a room until you are found and killed” is a setup for another Virginia Tech nut-job, or worse a Beslan scenario by a coordinated group. Idiots.

    • “Now have the same scenario, except the teacher can “return fire” with a paintball gun. Compare the two, huddling versus returning fire, and have liberals answer tough questions about their “Gun Free Zone” stance and refusal to allow teachers to be armed. I’d pay to see that.”

      Watch that clip again, all the way through it. The ABC film crew has the teachers and students fighting back.

      To say I was shocked by that ABC story is an understatement.

      Very pleasantly shocked. They show a very lithe, small young teacher screwing up Mr. Active Shooter’s day. They also show what happens when the targets, er, students swarm attack the shooter.

      That ABC story has serious potential to change the response from ‘sit there and die’ to ‘GODDAMIT, I WANNA LIVE!’

      • Alright, saw the video through to the end. I’m 5’9 and 180. There’s no way a 130 pound young teacher little hottie with 20 minutes of martial arts training is going to disarm me. I’m not going to be disarmed by tennis balls bring thrown at me. What’s even worse is the sense of false confidence that many of these staff now have.

        “Alright, now the instructor is going to fight back.” Bullsh!t.

        There’s a reason I don’t throw staplers and textbooks in gunfights. Some mistakes you can only make once.

        • Very true. Can you imagine the loons who think this stuff up sitting in a planning meeting intended to discuss non-firearm related defense strategies and coming up with . . . this? And these are people with college educations, many with graduate degrees! What they lack is any sense of how real threats and real danger can suddenly appear. Their ignorance is stunning.

        • I went to school a long, long time ago. I don’t recall any of my teachers being as cute as the dozen or so “lookers” in that news report.

          The fact that they are finally teaching victims to resist and not just simply submit seems like a move in the right direction. The next logical step needs to be armed resistance.

          Not likely, with the current crop of administrators who will dance all around the answer (shoot back) while being careful to never, ever touch it. Call it kabuki/security theater.

        • “There’s no way a 130 pound young teacher little hottie with 20 minutes of martial arts training is going to disarm me. I’m not going to be disarmed by tennis balls bring thrown at me.”

          Disarm you, no.

          Disarm a little Adam Lanza (or your average 15 year old) asshole, just maybe.

          The tennis balls were just an example. Hurl a 5 pound text book, fire extinguisher, or anything else with mass at the shooter.

          Come to think of it, Bear-be-Gone 30 foot range pepper spray in a retention holster on the belt of the teachers may do the trick as well, and would likely be an easier sell than the ‘Bad-Evil’ firearm.

          Let’s use our imagination on this.

          Beats the fvck out of cowering in the corner waiting to get shot.

        • The typical punk active shooter might well be overcome by these tactics. He often is little and doesn’t know jack shit about actual hand-to-hand.

          However, I agree that motivated and trained killers would not be thrown off for long. Even the drill where the teacher is disarming the guy who is fighting back is unrealistic, because the instructor was unwilling to kill or even injure her, and a real gunman wouldn’t be so inhibited. (And if you watch carefully, he never does drop the gun; he’s just not able to bring it to bear.)

          Overall this is probably better than cowering for most situations. It’s certainly an improvement in state of mind for such things. Cower and die vs. fight back. Perhaps someone will finally say, “if it’s time to fight back let’s give them the tools to do so more effectively. Gee, what would that tool be? Help me out here… what could it be?”

          On the other hand, I have to say I found it funny that most of the thrown objects (remember that the tennis ball is a proxy for heavier, harder objects) in the drill at the end hit the teacher who was grappling with the gunman.

  6. OK, I’ll say it, because I can’t be the only one thinking it…

    False flag called off when the patsy failed to materialize?

  7. “The police chief now says that officers won’t use weapons in future drills.”

    So, the point of having these “live fire” drills is to make it as real as possible, yet now the public outcry forces them to make it less scary. Why continue if you can’t actually simulate the situation?

  8. I’ve said it before, and I’m going to say it many times in the future: PULL YOUR KIDS OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL!
    I say this for several reasons. First, if you have a problem with the schools, don’t just whine about it, do a better job yourself.
    Second, if the government is teaching all the children, is it any surprise that they are coming out as progressives? The government should NEVER be involved in teaching the children of a free nation – it’s a powerful, sinister control mechanism.

    • THIS right here.

      And even be wary of some private schools. Which function just like public schools but with a religious slant. Though private schools can be very good, have to find the right one.

      Home education (which in reality is WORLD education) is the best for fostering freedom minded, independent thinking, mature humans.

      Insane that her response to kids texting was “they shouldn’t be using their phones”. Who the hell is she? They are free individual humans, not cattle for her to prod.

    • +1,000

      In addition to what you said, you can hardly screw up your children’s education at badly as the government is doing.

  9. The historian Eric Hobsbawm once opined that in most societies the difference between cops and criminals is very slight. In recent years as America’s police have become increasingly marginalized and alienated from mainstream society, it looks like his observation is also becoming true for us.

  10. I am not allowed to have a gun in my classroom, but the baseball bat behind my desk is perfectly fine. If someone ran a drill like this and didn’t tell me it was a drill, they’d be getting a baseball bat to the face the second I see a rifle entering my classroom doorway.

    How did anyone think this was a good idea?

    • “Officer Killed By Teacher in Active Shooter Drill” would put an instant end to this sort of school terrorism.

      And yes, I said terrorism. Marching children outside to the sound of a fire alarm does not induce terror, but an ‘active shooter drill’ in which the children really expect to be killed does induce terror.

  11. “As for the student apparently texting before the drills have concluded, Calvelage said, ‘they shouldn’t be using their cells in class in the first place.’ ”

    Spoken like a true authoritarian bureaucrat. Rules before humanity, children!

  12. Kids and teachers huddling in a corner of the classroom constitutes safety? looks to me like the very definition of sitting ducks.

    Reminds me of the duck and cover drills. Better get under the desk to cushion the blast from that nuclear bomb!

  13. Is it just me, or does everything officially thought up for active shooter scenarios seem like it’s intended to increase the death toll?

  14. Its been said on here already by someone else but it bears repeating.

    How hilarious would it be if when the ”shooter” stepped into a classroom and some kid in the back pops him 3 times with a paintball gun and says ”You’re dead”.

  15. So remind us again how effective cowering in a corner is, and hoping your time isn’t up? Seems like the “shooter” was able to make it between classes unchallenged. Maybe this is the wake up call schools need. For the students and staff to feel what it’s like to be powerless and at the mercy of someone else seeking to do harm. I would hope that after this simulation that many of them now give serious thought to their own safety, and not simply relying on others for protection.

  16. What’s wrong with teachers “learning” how to use arms??

    @ 20 seconds in the video here comes the cop that played counterstrike way too much when he was younger.

    @ 2:38 into the video all the children are huddled into a small pile in the corner of the room. Lets not spread out – lets group together to make it easier for the shooter.

    At the very least if they don’t want to be armed against an armed intruder, they should at least take all the desks, tables, chairs and bar them against the door. It is certainly better than just huddling in an easy target in the corner of the room.

    “they shouldn’t be using their cells in class in the first place.”

    I think a mass shooting is valid reason to use a cell phone anywhere.

    • First off – every classroom in every school I ever went to had two exits – period, not counting windows. Are we really building schools that have no emergency exits? If so, those architects and the school boards need to be strung up (figuratively) – but it should hit ’em in the pockets.

      Though I will note that the Community College I went to did NOT have secondary emergency exits in every room – only really in the much OLDER buildings.

  17. “Initially, only three people knew the lockdown at Jewett Middle Academy on Thursday was only a drill, police said. ”

    I assume there were more than three cops on the scene.
    Police chief, SWAT commander, and school principal add up to three people.

    Taking the “three people” statement literally, the cops running into the school with loaded rifles were REALLY ready to ventilate somebody in a “split second decision”, because they didn’t know it was a drill?

    Time to fire the city leaders and replace them with people who will fire the police chief before a student or teacher gets killed.

    • Oops. It appears that two of the people who knew it was only a drill were the school resource officer, who kept his loaded sidearm holstered, and a local cop, who did not load his AR-15. If that was the way it went down, the only dangers were from heart attacks and teacher/student attempts at self-defense.

      If there were kids huddled in classrooms waiting to be shot, and it sounds like there were, I stand by my earlier claims of domestic terrorism, but I retract my assessment that this was stupidly dangerous.

  18. Yes!!!! We must indoctrinate children to be victims so the Democrat Party can continue to victimize them as adults. What a bunch of f*cktards we have at all levels of government.

  19. Why did the “shooter” feel the need to cover his face? He’s proud of all the good he’s doing, right?

    That video was pathetic. And yet it is the model for school response. +1 on the comment about how it seems these protocols are designed for the most casualties possible…

  20. I wonder what those Oathkeepers have to say about something like this..? Won’t kick down our doors and confiscate/imprison/murder, my ass.

  21. Oh, and the vid with this post is BS, Once those kids knew it was a “drill” they should have swarmed that a$$hole and stomped him to death.

  22. The worst part I can think is what if some kid produced a weapon from a backpack or pocket and made ready to attack a would be attacker?

    Even if they didn’t accidentally attack a police officer or teacher etc who was participating in this unannounced drill, they could now be on the hook for having a weapon at school.

    In high school it was not uncommon for me to have a pocket knife with me even though it wasn’t allowed. I’m sure many kids fall into similar situations. College I never carried but always had a knife; if I were to do it again I’d carry regardless of school policy. I wouldn’t wait in a corner to get killed, I”d be in the best position to attack someone coming in and try to take control of the weapon.

    • Interesting point. Not all kids are helpless and not all kids will cower in a corner and wait to be hurt or killed. At 13 one of my nephews is tall and quite strong. He’s easily a match for many grown men, despite his age. There are kids like him who are not easily cowed and who will fight back. What angers me the most is that school officials put them—and all kids, really—is situations where they are intentionally made vulnerable. The thought of a couple of determined unarmed kids confronting a killer in their school is not something I want to even think about. But, if schools continue to be “gun-free”, it’s something that will probably happen sooner or later.

      The problem is that most teachers in the lower grades tend to be young women who are terribly naive about threats and violence. They’ve lived cosseted lives where bad things happened to other people, never to them—most have never even had someone get really, really angry at them much less try to do them physical harm. This doesn’t mean they aren’t brave and won’t try to defend their kids even to the point of sacrificing their lives. We’ve already seen that happen. The problem is that they’re just woefully unprepared for The Bad Thing happening. Their safety ultimately comes from being well enough armed and well enough trained to fight against a bad guy. I just don’t know how to convince them of that fact.

      • I have a friend who fits that description 100%; she is a young naive teacher of middleschoolers, although I wouldn’t reserve being young and naive to just women. I have met many so called men who fit the same bill.

        On once particular occasion we were at a party and I told her to watch out for a particular guy being a creeper. Her response, “Don’t worry, I know karate, I have a black belt!” Now there is a lot wrong with that statement that perfectly illustrates how many people are just blind to the ways of the world and don’t know what a real fist fight, gun fight, stabbing etc look like. I haven’t seen all the horrors and violence f this world myself, but I have no delusions that it looks like it does in the movies. Anyways, she is five foot nothing and weighs 100 pound wet and instead of launching into a long rant about real fights etc all I said to her is: “He is bigger and stronger than me. How do you expect to fight him off by yourself? I couldn’t That’s why I carry a gun; it will trump karate, size, and strength if employed properly.” I think it got my point across nicely.

      • “There are kids like him who are not easily cowed and who will fight back.” And those are PRECISELY the kids the system is trying to cow or subvert. Give them a bit of authority, ability to force others to submit, and you got them for life. That is called subversion. Turning them away from the moral code that would stop them from doing such.

  23. I work in public transportation and we had to watch training videos of “active shooter” situations. Of course the “bad guy” had an AR! I was appaled at the instructions suggested in the video. 1) hide under your desk. 2) hide in an office or board room with the lights off. 3) keep quiet and maybe the shooter will think the room is empty. The only time they suggested fighting back was after all the other options were exhausted or not possible. They said to throw something at the shooter in hopes of distracting him! Unbelievable

    • I can think of some things to throw at an invading shooter that would distract him:

      chemistry class — nitric acid
      biology class: formaldehyde
      home econ class: hot soup
      arts and crafts: glass

      But they probably don’t mention those.

  24. FTA:

    As for the student apparently texting before the drills have concluded, Calvelage said, “they shouldn’t be using their cells in class in the first place.”

    I think this quote nicely encapsulates the mental disorder that is progressive ideology. Calvelage is quite the useful idiot, isn’t she?

  25. Is it just me, or was the district’s Department of Safe Schools busy being high on crack while all this was being planned? WTF, O?

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