School Shootings Continue: Let’s Blame the Gangs

LA SCHOOLS-Associated Press: PORTLAND POLICE MAKE ARREST IN SCHOOL SHOOTING

Dec 13, 2014: Police in Portland have arrested a suspect in the shooting that injured three people outside an alternative high school.

Authorities said they stopped a vehicle around 1:30 a.m. Saturday at North Interstate Avenue and Going Street and arrested a 22-year-old man. A handgun was found in the vehicle.

Police were searching an apartment about half an hour later as part of the investigation. The apartment is about five blocks east of the shooting near Rosemary Anderson High School.

Detectives are investigating and will release the suspect's name and charges after he is booked into the Multnomah County Jail.

Witnesses told police there may have been a dispute outside the high school on Friday, just before the shooting occurred at a street corner.

The assailant and two other people fled, and the wounded students went to the school for help, a police spokesman said. A 16-year-old girl was critically wounded while two males were hospitalized in fair condition. Another girl was grazed by a bullet.

“Based on the investigation thus far, the shooting appears to be gang-related,” Sgt. Pete Simpson said Friday night in a statement.

Police gang investigators “feel comfortable saying this is a gang-related shooting based on some of the people involved,” Simpson added in an interview. Police said they believe the shooter has gang ties. “Simpson declined to say which victims might be linked to gangs.”

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IT WAS AN ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL … FOR ‘THOSE KIDS’. The cops are “comfortable” that it was gang related. “Simpson declined to say which victims might be linked to gangs.” Because, gentle readers, victims linked to gangs are perpetrators after all.

Look inside the paper:
Some kids are being shot
The bullets - they are flying -
It should give us food for thought.

But it isn’t in our neighborhood
Though it really is a shame;
And the Feds might take away our guns
When it’s just the gangs to blame.

And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest
Anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

- With apologies to Phil Ochs

●●●

Today marks the second anniversary of the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Sandy Hook had state-of-the art security. A locked entrance door with a remote ‘buzz-in’ opener and closed circuit TV surveillance of the front entrance. There was a schoolwide intercom system and a staff well prepared and rehearsed in emergency procedure. The staff performed as rehearsed. It took the police two minutes to respond. In that time the shooter killed twenty six-year-old first-graders and six adults.

In the two years since there have been 21 deadly school shootings in the U.S., - about once a month – not counting the one in Portland Friday …which had no fatalities and was buried on page A13 in the Times.

• Since Sandy Hook a total of 32 victims have been killed in school shootings (not including shooters).
• 11 additional victims were injured.
• 5 shooters were killed (including four who committed suicide, and one shot dead by police).
• The school shootings occurred across 16 states.
• 14 attacks occurred at K-12 schools, and 7 occurred on college or university campuses. One was in Santa Monica.
• During the same period, there have been dozens of other gun incidents on school grounds that caused injuries, as well as seven additional cases where someone committed suicide with a firearm, but no one else died. [[  ]]

In that time the federal government has done zero/zilch/nada to prohibit/limit/restrict firearms purchases to the mentally ill or to restrict the size of ammunition magazines or the sale+transfer of assault weapons. In that time LAUSD has sent two part-time Security Aides to every elementary school, armed with a roll of yellow stickers, a clipboard and an orange vest. And while those folks are supposed to work exclusively at school security, they end up doing clerical work, filing, making copies, answering phones, etc.

Take a look at these two videos: Video 1 and Video 2 They show what we’re doing and what we aren’t doing. They hint at what we should be doing. Let’s do it.

 

(Scott Folsom is a parent and parent leader in LAUSD. He is the former President of Los Angeles 10th District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. Scott is a member of the California State PTA Board on Managers. He blogs at the excellent 4 LA Kids … where this perspective was originally posted.)

-cw

 

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