S09.E13: School Resource Officers

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Main topic:  School Resource Officer; a.k.a., police in schools to protect our future taxpayers 

Also: The Platinum Jubilee; people on TV get a little too British for the Platinum Jubilee; banana sculpture vandalism

Original air date 2022.06.05

[scarynikki12]

Glad we started with some levity before getting into Uvalde. Nice snark on Andrew's Covid "diagnosis". Shame it won't be seen in the UK.

Ollie broke it down well. The SROs aren't making schools safer and the comparison to what we'd do if OFF actually attracts mosquitoes rather than repelled them was a good one.  

Charmed had Cole saying that "apples are the fruit of knowledge" but beyond that I have no idea why taking an apple to the teacher was a thing. 

That Head of Discipline guy is an ass. You absolutely should know that those kids are being arrested and ending up with criminal records. It's 100% your business. But we know he's one of these guys who gets into semantics to make himself look better. It looks bad for him if he's over seeing closing to 300 student arrests but if it's not part of his jurisdiction then he can claim it's no happening. Asshole.

Let's see. The student was knocked unconscious and could have died but sure let's also feel bad about people getting mad at the SRO who hurt her. Those are totally the same thing.

Bravo Ollie for his plea for gun control and redirection of school resources.

I enjoyed the montage of local anchors trying on British/Mrs. Doubtfire accents.

And ending on the weird ass statues in Australia was hilarious. Oh! The crocodile wearing boxing gloves! Australia is a terrifying place (due to their bugs) but I will so do a weird sculpture tour if I ever visit. I hope Melbourne takes him up on the offer to take the Go Fuck Yourself statue.

[Annber03]

Excellent end speech/rant in the main segment there, John. I say this far, far too often, but seriously, we need to play these speeches on a loop everywhere people can hear them until they finally fucking sink in.

Also loved, "Oh, no, my good bitch, that is very much your business!", as well as the fact that they put Adrien's initials on their set :D. 

I remember the clip about the guy suggesting man traps being shown on Colbert. I thought I'd heard plenty of stupid ideas before in relation to how to stop school shootings, but that one takes a special kind of dumbassery to put out there. Though that woman suggesting "blankets on the windows" certainly gives the "man traps" moron a run for his money.,,

I'm glad John pointed out the inherent issues of racial problems that come with bringing cops into schools, and the fact that they can be pretty damn violent, 'cause I was thinking the exact same thing. I mean, if we have regular cops sitting on people's necks for nine minutes and choking them to death, it's not exactly a leap to imagine a school cop doing something similar. Which also begs the question, what if one of those school cops decides to be the one to commit a school shooting? Why, even after all the horror stories we've heard about abusive and corrupt and violent cops over the years, do people still seem to think that they'll never be capable of committing such violent crimes themselves? 

He's also right that the mere presence of cops is not a deterrent to crime. I remember, shortly after Columbine, we would have officers occasionally come to my school and do random locker checks, to see whether kids had guns on hand or, more often than not, whether kids had drugs or alcohol in their possession. 

Yeah, those random locker searches didn't do shit. None of my classmates brought guns to school, thank goodness, but a whole lot of 'em did drugs and alcohol, and did sneak that stuff onto the premises. So...remind me again what exactly was achieved there? Seriously, I get such a kick out of the backwards logic people are using here. The anti-gun control side says that we can't ban or restrict people's access to guns, because criminals will just find ways to get around the laws and get the guns anyway. 

But apparently those same criminals would totally be stopped by security measures and guards? Apparently they would look at a school (or theater, or concert venue, or supermarket, or so on) and suddenly be like, "Welp, I was going to shoot up the place, but darn, there's all this stuff in the way, I'm just gonna go home, 'cause I don't want to get in trouble!" They wouldn't dare try and find ways around any of those restrictions? Yeah, no. That's literally not how that works. And we have plenty of examples of mass shooters getting past and around security measures and guards/officers to prove that. 

I also appreciated John pointing out that people with guns are often not the ones who wind up taking down these shooters, that it's more often than not unarmed civilians who stop them by simply tackling them to the ground. Y'know, when the shooters don't take themselves out before the cops can get to them, which is also a very common ending to these kinds of tragedies. 

And aside from the school shooting issue, the fact that people are expecting cops and teachers alike to handle and discipline children at school is insane. So many of the parents currently bitching about the way teachers do their job at school in terms of what they're teaching their kids and all that are the same ones who apparently expect those teachers to take on the parenting role that they've clearly completely abdicated. No. Fuck that. Make the parents be responsible for their kids again, and if they aren't going to be responsible for their kids when they act up in school, then I say we start holding the parents responsible, too. Teachers have enough shit to deal with, it's not their job to teach your kids how to behave, that's something they should've learned well before they left their house. And if you're going to expect the teachers to raise your kids for you, then shut the hell up about how "offended" you are when they teach the actual facts about science/history/sex ed/etc. that make you uncomfortable. 

Love, too, that so many schools don't have counselors and nurses and psychologists on staff - y'know, the very people that children are going to need to turn to if, god forbid, their school becomes the setting of yet another mass shooting. 

But remember, everyone, asking kids to wear masks during the pandemic was a bad idea because that might "traumatize" them. Active shooter drills, cops milling about their schools, having bulletproof walls and windows and doors and whatnot, and suggesting teachers walk around armed as well? Nah, that's totally fine. That won't fuck them up in any way whatsoever. 

Just absolutely blows my mind that this is the state our country is in at this point in regards to this issue, and that too many people are either okay with this or seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that this is just how schools have to be nowadays. Schools. Shouldn't. Be. Mini. Prisons. This. Shouldn't. Be. A. Controversial. Opinion. Like John said, get the cops out of the schools, and get some actual gun control in place. It's really not that complicated. Every one of our allies have gotten with the program on that issue, it's far, FAR past time for us to do the same. 

As for other, less ranty stuff..."Future taxpayers." Okay. 

Of course John would want that disturbing Australian banana XD. I hope Melbourne takes him up on that exchange and donation offer.

(Seriously, though, what in the actual fuck is with that banana...:p?)

[paigow]

Ollie is spending like a drunken NFL General Manager... Trading a healthy  player AND cash for an injured player

[swanpride]

...frankly there is so much wrong with all of this, I don't even know where to start...so I begin with something which wasn't really explored: You have to put on your college application if you have ever been arrested? Not if you have ever been convicted (which I already would consider a questionable thing to ask), but just if you have been arrested? Like, you might not even have DONE something, just walking down the street and some overeager cop decides to arrest you because you look somewhat similar to someone else, and the result would be that your options for higher education are limited? How f... up is that? 

And, just in general: Why search for solutions for a problem, which other countries have already most solved? Oh, right, because the NRA doesn't like the solution...

[Welshman in Ca]

10 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

Glad we started with some levity before getting into Uvalde. Nice snark on Andrew's Covid "diagnosis". Shame it won't be seen in the UK.

I enjoyed the montage of local anchors trying on British/Mrs. Doubtfire accents.

If you think that most people in the UK believe his "covid diagnosis" you're seriously misinformed & UK tv is just as bad as John when it comes to stuff like that, where do you think he gets it from? Watch an old episode or two of spitting image to see how the UK tv treats politicians, royals and anyone else.

Well the fact that there is no such thing as a British accent doesn't help them in their attempts.

[JustHereForFood]

The idea of cops in schools sounds kind of frightening and I'm not even a minority. As John said, kids should deserve a right to be jerks sometimes, without having to fear being body-slammed to ground or having a permanent record for writing stuff on walls for example. Sure, they can be horrible, as everyone who has been bullied can attest to, but I doubt that could be helped by having cops around. Cops can be bullies too, far too often. And at least teachers who have to deal with those students have some training for it (though sometimes not enough of it).

We don't have cops in schools, yet we've had no school shooting ever, as far as I know. Sure, we also don't have such easy access to guns, but why should that be related? (/s)

So the idea about the banana statue is basically to exchange John's alligator with Melbourne's banana? Seems like a waste of air travel to me. I guess I'm over those pointless displays of wealth, especially if there isn't any kind of message behind it.

10 hours ago, Annber03 said:

But remember, everyone, asking kids to wear masks during the pandemic was a bad idea because that might "traumatize" them. Active shooter drills, cops milling about their schools, having bulletproof walls and windows and doors and whatnot, and suggesting teachers walk around armed as well? Nah, that's totally fine. That won't fuck them up in any way whatsoever. 

Yes, exactly. I would be frightened as a kid in school if we had a cop around. Especially if they were armed, I am not sure if that was specified but I guess it being USA, they probably are. Surely that can't go wrong in any way, like someone from the school stealing the cop's gun or something, right?

2 hours ago, swanpride said:

And, just in general: Why search for solutions for a problem, which other countries have already most solved? Oh, right, because the NRA doesn't like the solution...

Pretty much this.

[Ceindreadh]

18 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

Glad we started with some levity before getting into Uvalde. Nice snark on Andrew's Covid "diagnosis". Shame it won't be seen in the UK.

Oh the snark on Andrew was totally shown in the UK version. 

[Annber03]

7 hours ago, JustHereForFood said:

The idea of cops in schools sounds kind of frightening and I'm not even a minority. As John said, kids should deserve a right to be jerks sometimes, without having to fear being body-slammed to ground or having a permanent record for writing stuff on walls for example. Sure, they can be horrible, as everyone who has been bullied can attest to, but I doubt that could be helped by having cops around. Cops can be bullies too, far too often. And at least teachers who have to deal with those students have some training for it (though sometimes not enough of it).

The other thing that struck me about the stories of kids being scrutinized and arrested for minor things...so...kids who do that stuff, we'll go all out in arresting them and body-slamming them to the ground and all that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, the Uvalde school shooter literally posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot up a school mere minutes before he did just that, and...no monitoring of his activities by any law enforcement beforehand. Nope, apparently all the red flags he gave off (and he gave off a HELL of a lot, from what I've read online) were of no major concern to people.

But hey, at least we stopped that one girl from doing a science experiment, or a young boy from scrawling initials on the walls, so, y'know, our school systems/towns are totally on top of things! 

Quote

Yes, exactly. I would be frightened as a kid in school if we had a cop around. Especially if they were armed, I am not sure if that was specified but I guess it being USA, they probably are. Surely that can't go wrong in any way, like someone from the school stealing the cop's gun or something, right?

I have pointed this out SO MANY TIMES whenever the topic of teachers being armed comes up. Have we just, like, completely forgotten all the stories we've heard of teachers hooking up with students? What happens if the teacher shares their gun with a student? What happens if the student takes the gun, either 'cause they're devastated should they and the teacher end their relationship or because they simply want to take it out 'cause, hey, they've got free access to it, so why not, right? Or other potential scenarios of that sort. 

And now with the stories John told of how some kids (at least the white ones, anyway) who are friendly with police officers who roam the schools, there's a chance of similar incidents happening there, too, or officers freely showing off their guns to teachers, or whatever. 

But I guess worst-case scenarios just don't exist in this magical "arm everyone or let everyone be around people who are armed!" world these people have concocted. 

[paigow]

2 hours ago, Annber03 said:

But I guess worst-case scenarios just don't exist in this magical "arm everyone or let everyone be around people who are armed!" world these people have concocted. 

• Armed 4th grade teacher shot in classroom by adult assailant
• Student picks up handgun from body [video game SOP] for self-defence
• SWAT breaches door 1 hour after first 911 call and sees armed student standing over dead teacher
• What happens next???

[SnideAsides]

Local council has spoken on John's banana appeal:

[paigow]

7 minutes ago, SnideAsides said:

Local council has spoken on John's banana appeal:

This mayor is a shrewd negotiator... Ollie will have to add a wax POTUS, or a mascot

[ahisma]

11 hours ago, JustHereForFood said:

I guess I'm over those pointless displays of wealth, especially if there isn't any kind of message behind it.

Yeah, I prefer when he spends HBO money on things like buying up and canceling medical debt, or sponsoring a koala chlamydia clinic. Though one end-of-year explosives extravaganza is fine.

[andromeda331]

I love John pointing out  how people will come up with any idea no matter how insane then simply ban assault rifles.

If putting cops in schools really detered school shootings then we wouldn't have any. That hasn't stopped anything especially kids getting records for science projects and writing their name on school walls. 

[swanpride]

The truth is that cops actually can't do that much if there is an active shooter at the scene, even if they are well-trained. Ironically the fact that schools in the US are so fortified nowadays makes it even more difficult, because they are so fortified, once the shooter is in, the advantage is clearly with the shooter. 

[paigow]

7 minutes ago, swanpride said:

The truth is that cops actually can't do that much if there is an active shooter at the scene, even if they are well-trained.

If they are incompetent or cowardly - e.g. Parkland - slim chance becomes none...

[peeayebee]

9 hours ago, paigow said:

If they are incompetent or cowardly - e.g. Parkland - slim chance becomes none...

e.g., Uvalde...

[swanpride]

Yeah, but I feel that the discussion regarding the incompetence of the police in those cases is partly a distraction, because it suggest that it could go differently if they were better trained and not cowardly. Well, the fact aside that police training in the US is in itself a shambles, as well as the problems with the police in general (even IF we had police officers in schools over there, I really doubt that they would arrest anyone for scribbling something somewhere or for a science experiment if for no other reason than that it would translate to a LOT of paperwork with no gain), even a well trained police officer would have a hard time to discover an active shooter early enough to take him out before he can hurt anyone (if for no other reason than that you don't really know that you are dealing with an active shooter until he actually, well, shoots someone), taking someone out with a f... assault riffle. 

[paigow]

1 hour ago, swanpride said:

even a well trained police officer would have a hard time to discover an active shooter early enough to take him out before he can hurt anyone 

The issue is mitigating a bad situation... vs exacerbating... If the death toll gets cut to single digits, nobody would call it a victory, but waiting outside on the lawn far away from the gunfire [Parkland] makes that person an accessory...

[swanpride]

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to excuse anyone...I just feel that we shouldn't allow ourselves to get distracted from the fact that a lot of countries have already measures against shooters which work. And which the US doesn't implement. Instead they go for BS like more police, bulletproof decorations and one door (at least until the next big fire). The discussion about more police in the school is of the same category. So even if there weren't all the issues which were listed in the episode, it has been proven that it wouldn't work. 

[iMonrey]

Quote

The truth is that cops actually can't do that much if there is an active shooter at the scene, even if they are well-trained.

Is the school cop armed with an AR-15? Maybe the school cop is scared shitless because he's out-gunned by some lunatic with two AR-15s and a Glock. I don't want to hear any nonsense about how they are supposed to be "trained" to take down a school shooter. The very idea that anyone would have to be trained for something like that speaks volumes to the inherent problem we have in this country.  

[paigow]

On 6/8/2022 at 11:09 AM, iMonrey said:

Is the school cop armed with an AR-15? Maybe the school cop is scared shitless because he's out-gunned by some lunatic with two AR-15s and a Glock. 

The misconception is that every cop assigned to a school was a SEAL / Green Beret before joining SWAT. Reality is that most of them are like Smitty on The Rookie  

Edited June 11, 2022 by paigow

[ahisma]

2 hours ago, paigow said:

The misconception is that every cop assigned to a school was a SEAL / Green Beret before joining SWAT.

Jordan Klepper has a good piece on The Daily Show where he first gets trained to carry, and then gets trained to be “a good guy with a gun.” The takeaway is that it’s really hard to respond to a shooter event, like in a school, and you have to pretty much be training on it all the time. The police have a lot to do—they don’t really have the time to constantly be training for this one instance.

[Lantern7]

Good job by John covering a sensitive topic and finding a different angle. SROs are not the only solution to prevent disasters, and they can often make things worse. And I can't imagine trying to explain an arrest over something that was blown way out of proportion.

I saw the bits about the "man trap" and the weighted blankets on The Daily Show. They also had a sound bite from Ted Cruz. I guess it didn't air here because John would have been obligated to channel Dr. Seuss yet again . . . and he needed that time to talk about trying to acquire a vandalized weird banana sculpture in Australia. Thinking about it, he made the right call.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Lantern7

[Annber03]

1 hour ago, Lantern7 said:

I saw the bits about the "man trap" and the weighted blankets on The Daily Show. They also had a sound bite from Ted Cruz. I guess it didn't air here because John would have been obligated to channel Dr. Seuss yet again . . . and he needed that need to talk about trying to acquire a vandalized weird banana sculpture in Australia. Thinking about it, he made the right call.

Indeed. The less opportunity anyone has to hear Ted Cruz talk about...well...anything, the better for all involved. 

[Shermie]

On 6/6/2022 at 10:27 PM, ahisma said:

On 6/6/2022 at 11:16 AM, JustHereForFood said:

I guess I'm over those pointless displays of wealth, especially if there isn't any kind of message behind it.

Yeah, I prefer when he spends HBO money on things like buying up and canceling medical debt, or sponsoring a koala chlamydia clinic. Though one end-of-year explosives extravaganza is fine.

His banana-crocodile exchange did include money for the koala chlamydia clinic and money for a local food bank. 

[Rlb8031]

One thing that I was surprised that John didn't discuss was the fact that SRO's are also know for tagging kids and putting them on the radar for the police when other crimes are being investigated. This happens a lot in minority communities where kids get noted as "gang members" because of their friendships and affiliations in school. It is literally why the phrase "school-to-prison pipeline" was coined.

[swanpride]

Naturally they do....

[b2H]

One thing not mentioned, although it didn’t happen at a school:

In the Buffalo shooting at the grocery store, there was an armed security officer present.  He shot at the shooter, who was wearing body armor.  His shots bounced off the shooter.  The shooter shot the security officer dead.

How many school shootings have taken the SRO out??

Edited June 19, 2022 by b2H

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, b2H said:

One thing not mentioned, although it didn’t happen at a school:

In the Buffalo shooting at the grocery store, there was an armed security officer present.  He shot at the shooter, who was wearing body armor.  His shots bounced off the shooter.  The shooter shot the security officer dead.

How many school shootings have taken the SRO out??

That's a very good question.

[paigow]

11 hours ago, b2H said:

How many school shootings have taken the SRO out??

Or rephrasing the question... How many times did an SRO actually confront / engage the shooter versus hiding?

[Kel Varnsen]

On 6/8/2022 at 6:13 PM, paigow said:

The misconception is that every cop assigned to a school was a SEAL / Green Beret before joining SWAT. Reality is that most of them are like Smitty on The Rookie  

Ya my understanding is that cops doing shooting training so they can hit paper targets (like on cop shows) is fairly straightforward. But training cops so that they can accurately shoot at a target that is shooting back and trying to kill them is really fucking difficult. It's probably why most cops aren't part of the SWAT team, and why those cops work in a team. So expecting a school officer to be able to be John Wick, when someone shows up at a school and starts shooting seems like super high expectations. Especially since a shooter will probably have some sort of plan that the cop would have to respond to and have the element of surprise working in their favour.

[Annber03]

14 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

So expecting a school officer to be able to be John Wick, when someone shows up at a school and starts shooting seems like super high expectations. 

On a related note, I think this explains why so many anti-gun control people blame mass shootings on movies and TV and violent video games. They clearly seem to be influenced by media, to the point where they think they're going to come in like the big action hero in a movie and it's going to play out like some heroic moment in a movie and they're going to be the tough badass who saves the day. So naturally they would just assume that everyone else must be influenced by media the way they seem to be, too. 

[paigow]

16 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

So expecting a school officer to be able to be John Wick,..

The best guy for a school job... no gun required.. just a pencil or two