Sworn Baltimore City School Police Remain Unarmed
BALTIMORE MD Feb 22 2018
The City of Baltimore schools employed sworn law enforcement and have their own police force.
They wear police uniforms, badges and gun belts but are not allowed to wear those guns inside public schools. Guns must be locked up said one officer.
Discussions over arming officers in Baltimore schools are again resurfacing.
Baltimore City Schools Police FOP President Sgt. Clyde Boatwright is calling for a change in a law to allow the city’s 105 school police officers to carry guns during the school day.
Boatwright pointed to the shootings at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and in Parkland, Florida, as examples of why officers need to be armed. He said armed officers are vital to ensuring a safe and secure school environment, and officers want to be able to stand between danger and students.
“Recently we’ve recovered three handguns in schools from students. And we recovered another handgun from people who, armed, carjacked a student at City College.
We had an aluminum bat-yielding parent recently too.
So these people would have probably thought twice if they knew there was a trained, armed-certified police officer there,” Boatwright said.
School officers carried guns in city schools from 2001-2015 until the practice was discovered to be in violation of state law. Boatwright calls the law antiquated.
It’s an issue that continues to frustrate some city parents, who are trying to make sense of how the weapons policy is being carried out.
“I feel like the Baltimore City Schools officers should have guns nowadays, with everything that’s going on all the shootings. They could prevent a lot of stuff,” said parent Debra Moore.
In order for officers to carry firearms inside the schools, the law would have to be changed and there seems to be no real push in the General Assembly to get rid of the current law, that some city school police officers said, is tying their hands.
