THE POLICE PROBLEM

We have to ask ourselves if the money that was spent on cops in schools was instead spent on counseling for troubled students, would we be better off?

I would argue that this would have been just as effective at preventing shootings without any of the negative side effects.

Indeed. It’s not a defensible argument because it’s too categorically strong. I looked up some reasonable counter examples just to make sure I’m not crazy, but I will not be in the position of defending pigs, so I’ll leave it at that.

Definitely fuck the police, but don’t stoop to their level.

school shootings in 2024 average 1.8 per every school day (0.9 at 365 calendar days a year). The next highest country - Mexico - has one every ~~24 school days (one every 46 calendar days)~~

I would not call that a deterrent.

Edit: oh God, it's actually even worse. I assumed I was looking at yearly stats for Mexico. it was actually a decade. It's one every 15 months

If you want, you can find the data on the number of school shootings before and after Columbine. Here is a website with those stats: https://echomovement.org/school-shootings/

You can see that the change was slight at first, but in the last 10 years it has gone through the roof.

So, you can argue that there is no way to know how many were prevented, but we can see that they occur in MUCH larger numbers than they did pre-Columbine. Maybe the numbers would be higher without the cops there? Whose to say. I can tell you that there seems to be a problem that we aren't addressing, and sending cops into schools to arrest little children of color doesn't seem to be the answer we all are hoping for. Maybe we can look at the system in systemic racism and see what systems need to change? Does that system involve gutless fucking pigs who like to shoot minorities and hide while children are being mowed down? Maybe we should have a fucking barbecue.

So, yeah. You can't say how many they've prevented, but I can tell you how many dead children are buried now on their watch, and that tells me they aren't worth the salt in the cure.

I do know of at least two massive school shootings - Parkland and Uvalde - where the cops literally cowered outside, and listened as the shooter murdered child after child.

Every cop is trained that their primary objective is to make it home safe at the end of shift. Anything they have to do to accomplish that is acceptable, including killing people or allowing people to be killed. Cops don't protect anyone but themselves.

I agree with your comment 100%. But I down voted because of your edit. Never assume you know all the reasons someone might down vote.

It's literally impossible to know exactly how many, but it's statistically possible to compare data from before this measure was taken to after the measure. A serious argument could be made and it's probably already done. Also, the other point made is as important as this, since many other consequences come with armed police officers in schools. Considering the prevalence of non-white people in the imprisoned population, and the well-known bias of police officers in the USA against non-white people, well...

I took it that they were talking about active shooters that went ahead with it.
That that after all this expense and day to day intrusions, etc, that none of the thousands of shootings were ever stopped by the people who were employed and trained to do so...