Community deserves more for conclusion of the Parkland school shooting

Editor’s note: Yuval Alter is a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who escaped via the back of neighboring Westglades Middle School immediately after the first few shots. She is a member of the National Art Honor Society and Science National Honor Society. Her father, Oren, oversees crisis management for 30 campuses in the Southeast United States. He is a security expert with over 25 years of experience, including service in the Israeli Special Forces, corporate security and higher education security.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who was requested by Gov. Rick Scott to lead the commission investigating the Parkland shooting, now supports arming teachers. In an article published on November 2018 in the Tampa Bay Times and in an interview that aired on Dec. 6, Sheriff Gualtieri generally tied his change of opinion to the following findings he concluded from the commission’s work:

• In an active shooter situation, police response is not fast enough.

• Two to three police officers are not enough to provide adequate response to an active shooter.

• Specific teachers who volunteer will receive better screening and training than police officers and will thus be qualified to be armed first responders to an active shooting.

• A single victim of collateral damage is better than 30 dead children.

In our opinion, Sheriff Gaultieri’s claims are statistically questionable and more political truisms than claims based on findings. Reviewing the above-mentioned in context might help:

1. Police time of response depends on many parameters. Having armed police officers as school security establishes nearly the same time as armed teachers, especially when assuming more than one teacher is needed to neutralize a threat. Moreover, teachers have direct responsibility to their class in a “Code Red” protocol execution. The time it takes for someone to assume these responsibilities when teachers become first responders might make teacher response even slower than dedicated school police.

2. The number of police officers needed for an initial active shooter response is debatable and depends on various circumstances. Assuming that armed teachers can operate as a cohesive team that is numerically superior to the active shooter, or shooters, is a dubious assumption that has no empirical evidence to back it. Can anyone honestly claim how many armed teachers are needed to stop an active shooter, considering they have never been tested, are potentially outgunned, have no protective gear, advanced communications or adequate training?

3. Claiming that teachers will have better screening and training than police might be factually correct, however since the mission they have is comparable to a SWAT team, training should be compared to entities of a similar mission. SWAT teams, Navy SEALS and other similar units train extensively, mentally and physically, to qualify for shooting in a crowd. No teacher will receive that level of training and no SEAL team member routinely trains to shoot a “bad guy” among children he is intimately familiar with.

4. Collateral damage and friendly fire inflicted by teachers are a significant and unanswered risk. Two recent cases in the news had a veteran police officer die of a Highway Patrol officer friendly fire in California and a legal gun-carrying citizen shot by first responders in Alabama. Teachers do not have the same legal protections as police officers. Moreover, the probability of accidental discharge or suicide by gun owner is far higher than the probability that a gun will be used in an active shooter situation. Introducing guns to classrooms under the pretense of active shooter needs, and then associating a potential collateral damage as justifying a far greater number of active shooter victims, is a hyperbole at its most basic form.

The benefits of arming teachers are highly debatable. Any methodology that critiques current active shooter practices should evaluate arming teachers by the same criteria. To publicly conclude from the Parkland shooting that arming teachers is the answer to school shootings without empirical evidence dishonors the students, the teachers and the victims of Marjory Stoneman Douglas.