PART II – SCHOOL LOCK DOWN IS NOT A SAFETY PLAN

By Anthony Melé

A school safety plan that instructs children to sit in a room and wait for a psychotic killer or terrorist hostage taker to find them, is like locking them in a burning building so the firemen will know where they are.

The narrative given to us by the media at Newtown, Ct. Sandy Hook School incident is that a lone psychotic person entered the building and commenced committing cold blooded murders.

According to CNN reports, the public address system was left on; the entire school of 600 people heard the murders taking place.

Allegedly, he was alone and entered two classrooms and shot the children one by one, in the first room, then on to the next. Place yourself in the other classrooms listening to the screams crying for their parents to come rescue them and doing nothing.

The policy makers that instructed 600 people to sit and do nothing are equally culpable for creating the easy target psychotic mass murderers and hostage takers look for.

The alleged psychotic murderer was reported to have killed himself and that is how the rampage came to an end.

At a children’s school in Beslan, Russia, September 2004, Islamic terrorists grabbed 1,100 hostages, 777 of which were children for three days. It ended with 380 dead, 186 of which were children.

Terrorist planners will study these incidences when selecting a soft target. They will consider that a school of 600 would cooperate with them according to the Lock-Down Policy by controlling all of the hostages for them.

They will incorporate the policy into their plans that could conceivably send in two terrorist into each of every school in a town or small county. They will threaten the principal, who will announce a lock down, and everyone in the place will do as they were trained.

Imagine every police department responding to every school based on the Lock – Down Plan and you will begin to realize the vulnerability created by this policy. The Beslan Hostage model will be the likely result.

I assembled a round-table of counter-terrorist professionals from around the country to review this policy from their perspective. The consensus is there is not a one size fits all solution, but the Lock-Down policy is a disaster waiting to happen.

Decorated NYPD Special Operations Officer and Ramapo Resident Jose Guerra explained; SWAT snipers are trained to discern between escaping children and hostage takers. In response to questions about chaos and pandemonium, he observes in this case it could be effective in an escape scenario.

Bart Bechtel, retired Operations and Counter-Intelligence Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency; “There is no substitute for armed defense – none, [concealed carry] armed staff, deter, detect, disrupt.”

Mark McLaughlin, US Army Command and General Staff College says; “The tactical protocol is shaping up into three options; Run, Hide, Fight. So an early warning system would be vital to alerting the staff how to respond accordingly.”

Joseph Trindal, retired Regional Director, Federal Protective Services commented; “When the next one comes, it’s most doubtful that any of us will be there. The teachers and faculty must have decisional tools to make best choices under the worst of conditions in a deadly dynamic.”

There are viable counter-measures instead of the one size fit all Lock-Down Policy.

Parents; you entrust your child’s life to the authorities. Your own mind tells you to put distance between them and a rampaging fire or psychotic murderer.

The political pretext of taking guns away from the law-abiding in response to a psychotic episode in the name of school safety is a diversion not a safety plan.

It will not change the reality this policy invites disaster. The safety of your family is a family decision. Discuss it between yourselves, other parents, and take responsibility if you enabled them to be purged of the instinct for self preservation, instead of empowering them with intuitive survival skills.

The SCHOOL LOCK DOWN POLICY REVIEW study can be viewed in its entirety at www.amiglobalsecurity.com. Anthony Mele is a TEA Party activist and was the 2010 GOP candidate for Congressional District-17. He is a former intelligence staff NCO for high ranking national security officials at the Pentagon.

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