el Don /SANTA ANA COLLEGE • MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2014/eldonnews.org
ARMING SAFETY OFFICERS
In response to high profile school shootings across the nation, district officials explore lifting
a 25-year-old policy that banned campus security personnel from carrying firearms
NEWS
IN THE LINE
OF FIRE
An ongoing series
More than 90
campus shootings
have occured since
the Newton, Conn.
tragedy that killed
26 people.
el Don /SANTA ANA COLLEGE • MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2014/eldonnews.org
SHOOTERS / With hands above their heads, students and staff evacuate Santa Monica College after a shooting spree that left at least seven dead,
including a gunman, in June of 2013, in Santa Monica. The shooter was killed by Santa Monica police officers. / ROBERT GAUTHIER / TNS
4
BY JOVANY LEON / el Don
Because of high profile school shootings
across the nation, district officials are considering re-arming college safety officers.
The Safety and Security committee explored arming and training current safety
officers, or hiring former officers with experience in dealing with active shooters.
The committee met for the first time Oct.
15 to look at how the district is preparing in
the event of an active shooting at any
of its facilities, Board of Trustee member
and Safety Committee Chair Claudia
Alvarez said.
Since the elementary school shooting in
Newtown, Conn., where 26 students and
staff were killed in December 2012, there
have been 92 school shootings. Of those, 44
occurred at college campuses, the most recent on Nov. 20 at Florida State University,
where three people were injured, according
to the website Everytown for Gun Safety.
“It was important to not only know what
other campuses were doing, but it was
important to get complete data of how we
could improve,” Alvarez said.
Irvine Valley College and Saddleback
College are the only community college
campuses in Orange County that have
armed officers.
Citing costs and insufficient training,
RSCCD voted in 1989 to disarm its safety
officers, eliminate their duties as police
officials allowed to make arrests and carry a
firearm, and instead rely on the Santa Ana
Police Department.
The training for campus officers at the
time was a minimum of 40 hours, compared
to the 700 hours that SAPD officers were
required to undergo.
The escalating costs of training incoming
officers at $36,000 per year, and starting
salaries of $44,000, led RSCCD to disarm its
safety officers.
At Santa Ana College, ASG Environmental Awareness Commissioner Kyle Murphy
attended the Oct. 15 meeting when former
SAPD Chief Paul Walters gave a presentation to committee members about how the
district can improve campus safety.
“His professional recommendation was
that if staff had an unlimited amount [of
money], that they have a full-blown police
force,” Murphy said.
The cost to upgrade the safety officers
would be $1.1 to $1.2 million per year,
Walters said.
The money would go into the hiring of experienced safety officers as well as training
for all current safety officers.
Walters recommended the district hire six
armed and sworn officers, one new safety
officer and dispatcher for Santiago Canyon
College, as well as a new sergeant at SAC,
SCC and the Centennial Education Center.
“The costs to arm and train safety officers
given by Walters appeared to be inflated,”
Alvarez said.
Murphy is against the recommendation of
arming safety officers with lethal weapons
in the event a student might be armed with
a knife or other weapon.
“I don’t think the first reaction [by an officer] would be shoot to kill or even shoot to
make someone bleed,” Murphy said. Among
the complications, he noted, was that the
district is “going to have to bring psychiatric
services to any student that was around.”
If approved by the board of trustees, both
safety and armed officers would receive
extra training on how to handle a firearm
and the laws of arrest through the Orange
County Sheriff ’s Academy, director of Safety
and Security Alistair Winter said.
“The officers will be better trained. My
hope and desire is that they perform better
in terms of their duties,” Winter said.
Any implementation of new policies regarding arming and training campus safety
officers will take time.
“We are trying to do this in phases, and
trying to do this progressively,” Alvarez said.
76
Percent of school
shootings in which
one or more people
were injured
25
Percent of school
shootings in which
one or more people
were killed
48
Percent of school
shootings that
took place on a
college campus
Source:
Everytown for
Gun Safety