Powerline by John Hinderaker 2/2/2022
Liberals love to use school shootings as springboards for their favored hobby horses, usually more gun control. But what happened yesterday at the South Education Center in Richfield, Minnesota doesn’t fit the narrative.
This high school is part of a school district that focuses on special education, alternative learning and transitional services. As I understand it, many of its students come from other high schools where they have gotten into trouble, so that the South Education Center represents a second chance. It also embodies, perhaps, the ultimate in high school wokeness.
Yesterday an altercation broke out just outside the school building. A student pulled a gun and shot three other students, killing one and critically injuring another. My colleague Jeff Van Nest, a 20-year FBI agent who recently joined American Experiment, comments:
During a press conference on Wednesday, officials identified the two suspects who were arrested as Alfredo Rosario Solis, 19, and Fernando Valdez-Alverez, 18, both of Minneapolis. Gunfire killed 15-year-old Jahmari Rice.
Many are now asking whether this tragedy could have been prevented after South Education Center leaders removed police officers, dismantled metal detectors from school entrances, and failed to implement other safety measures after seizing a firearm from a student at the school in September 2021.
The school’s wokeism goes back at least to 2017.
Four years ago, school administrators opted to replace sworn police School Resource Officers with unarmed School Safety Coaches. Superintendent Sandy Lewandowski explained the safety coaches specialize in mental health, de-escalation, restorative justice, and safe physical interventions. Lewandowski believed this “homegrown model” has proven effective by reducing arrests from 65 to 12 during the first year after removing police from the school.
If you stop arresting people, arrests will go down.
Lewandowski expressed concern that police in the school put “students of color, [with disabilities] . . . at a high risk of going through what is termed the ‘pipeline to prison.’”
More:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/a-school-shooting-you-wont-be-hearing-about.php
