Brookfield approves almost $600K for school security after debate on armed or unarmed guards
Brookfield CT August 25, 2022 Voters have approved spending nearly $600,000 to hire armed and unarmed security personnel at the town’s public schools, after a contentious discussion that brought about 200 residents to the high school auditorium.
The lengthy debate held during a more than two-hour meeting mostly centered on whether the school district should hire armed guards rather than unarmed guards to perform duties including monitoring security cameras, ensuring doors are locked, and conducting the check-in process at the schools’ front entrances.
“This is a massive waste of taxpayer money under the guise under a false sense of security,” said Karl Hinger, speaking against the plan to hire unarmed guards.
The line of residents registering for the special town meeting snaked through the auditorium just after 7 p.m. Monday with voters preparing to decide whether to hire additional security personnel to patrol the town’s schools.
Based on recommendations by a School Security Task Force assembled in the weeks following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the Board of Education asked voters to authorize $251,000 in funding to place armed school resource officers at the town’s elementary schools; and $345,000 to hire five unarmed security guards to patrol the town’s four school buildings; along with a single armed security officer to monitor after-school events at Brookfield High School.
“Unarmed security might be useful in dealing with unruly students or a fist fight breaking out, but not against an active shooter focused on only taking as many lives as possible,” Hinger said.
Hinger’s comments and others opposing hiring unarmed guards received applause, but so too did those made by residents like Laura Orban, who pointed to evidence showing the added, albeit unarmed, layer of security would be key to protecting Brookfield students from an outside threat.
Orban realized everyone in the auditorium held the same goal in mind — to protect their children — but said “it is interesting that a lot of this is coming from the shooting at Uvalde but there is really no talk about the response to (that) shooting.”
“Unfortunately, mass shootings are not new, and we do know some things about how to stop them — it is disingenuous for us, as a community to say … we want to do everything we can to protect our children from mass shootings and then refuse to do the things we know work…” she added.
An investigation conducted by members of the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee found 376 law enforcement officers responded to the report of an active shooter at the Uvalde elementary school on May 24, but more than an hour lapsed before a special team of Border Patrol agents breached a classroom and killed the suspect, who had entered the school building through an unlocked door.
According to the report, “while the school had adopted security policies to lock exterior doors and internal classroom doors, there was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks.”
In explaining her support for the resolutions, Orban pointed to the difference between an armed school resource officer, a position outlined by state regulations that require special training for the role and ultimately filled by certified police officer hired by the Brookfield Police Department, and an armed school security guard, a position that, under state statutes, could only be filled by a retired police officer who “retired in good standing” and would receive annual training in the form of a one-day seminar offered by the state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
“It is not the same thing,” she said of the distinction. “And having an armed guard in our school is something we are doing to make ourselves feel better — it’s not for our kids.”
Despite the emotional back and forth, both measures passed: the first by a margin of 155 to 50; the second by a margin of 115 to 98.
As residents filtered out of the auditorium just after 9:30 p.m., Board of Education Chair Bob Belden said he was not surprised by the emotional turnout to the meeting, or its outcome.
“I think most people came to the meeting tonight knowing how they were going to vote,” Belden said. “It’s a topic that ignites passions both ways, and I have experienced that through our discussions on the Security Task Force — people have a very firm opinion, and they stick with it.”
