Quote:
Originally Posted by dr2005
I guess the key question in all of this is: was what the principal signed off an accurate depiction of what a "lockdown" situation would be like? I'm in no position to comment about such things as we don't tend to have or need them over here (thank goodness), but I'd say that's the key thing in this scenario. If it is very unlikely that officers with firearms would enter the school in such circumstances, then yes this was overboard and yes there should be some action taken to correct it (although whether it warrants a disciplinary I'm not so sure about - the road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that). If, on the other hand, officers with firearms would enter the school in such circumstances, then to be honest I don't see the problem. Yes, it may have scared the children - but if the risk they face is that serious, then isn't it better that they take it seriously? Treating such things too casually is likely to make people complacent if a real incident occurs, and that's when things can go very wrong indeed. I'm not suggesting scaring the living daylights out of kids on a regular basis is the way forward, but nor is shielding them completely from the reality of what might happen in a lockdown.
Again, I speak from a position of relative ignorance here but that to me seems the defining point.
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I highly doubt ANY of this would ever happen in a school lockdown here. My entire life, when we had lockdowns, we never even saw one officer; and if it was a real lockdown and there were officers in the school, they were in the halls, we were locked in classrooms. We never encountered them. But the big thing here is the simple fact that when a school goes into lockdown, people in the school understand they are in lockdown and know what to do. These kids had not been made aware of anything, they had no clue it was some kind of lockdown. So yes, I'd say it was a pretty damn stupid move to do what that principal did, because not only did she break lockdown protocol, she had the students of the school believing their lives were in danger. That's not what lockdown drills are supposed to do.