Are school shooter drills teaching our nation's police to think & act as soldiers?
It was Friday the 13th, and Skylar Walters thought he was going to die.
The 16-year-old inmate of Orangeville Jr.-Sr. High in Illinois was in gym class when a deranged-looking man barged into the school and began firing what appeared to be a handgun at several of the other students.
"I started praying to God and saying my last words," Skylar later recalled. "I was scared. I didn't know what to do."
As the intruder fired his gun, he called out the name of a particular student; the youngster quite sensibly fled the building. Other kids "were just running everywhere and crying and hiding," Skylar recounted. Some of the panicking schoolkids probably attempted to call or text their parents to describe the horror unfolding in front of them. They didn't know that each of the parents had been instructed not to answer if his child issued a desperate plea for help.
That last sadistic touch is what distinguished the May 13 "active shooter drill" in Orangeville from countless other performances of its kind staged in schools across the Soyuz by the Police State Play Actors' Guild. Most of the time, the kids for whose supposed benefit those drills are choreographed -- and the parents responsible for their care, education, and upbringing -- are let in on the joke.
If a bank robber bluffs his way through a heist with a toy gun, he's committed a real crime. The same is true of the people who terrorized the inmates of Orangeville Jr.-Sr. High on May 13. School District Superintendent Randy Otto has submitted his resignation, and some parents have discussed the possibility of a lawsuit -- but the appropriate criminal charges against those responsible aren't forthcoming.
"Our number one goal is to save lives," warbled Leigh Anne Ryals, Emergency Management Director for Baldwin County, Alabama, following a similar school shooter drill in Robertsdale's Central Baldwin Middle School a few years ago. The means such drills employ are incompatible with that goal, since the standard template is based on the "Lockdown" Scenario: The killers conduct the rampage on their own terms, end it at a time of their choosing, and the SWAT team merely cattle-pens the victims.
Today it is typical for police agencies to deploy "Resource Officers" to prowl the halls of schools in search of misbehavior that can be treated as criminal offenses, rather than disciplinary problems.
Self-styled tactical and counter-terrorism John Giduck offered a telling glimpse into the mindset of the armed strangers who haunt local government schools.
"You've got to be a one-man fighting force.... You've got to have enough guns, and ammunition and body armor to stay alive.... You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons.... You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers.... You must think of yourself as soldiers in a war because we're going to ask you to act like soldiers."
The purpose of "active shooter drills" is not to refine protocols intended to protect inmates of government schools; instead, it is to habituate children to the presence of paramilitary operators in their midst. Parents should ponder that reality as millions of young Americans begin their welcome Summer parole from the government's hybrid school/prison system -- and they should likewise consider the wisdom of making that parole an unconditional pardon.
"Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse"
by Annette Fuentes.
http://www.amazon.com/Lockdown-High-Schoolhouse-Becomes-Jailhouse/dp/1844676811
http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w218.html