Security guards at schools in Douglas County, Colo., will soon be the first in the country to be armed with semiautomatic rifles, a move aimed at protecting students from mass shootings and other violent attacks.
According to Richard Payne, the director of security and safety for the Douglas County School District, eight security officers will have the opportunity to be equipped with 10 semiautomatic rifles. Payne made the decision to spend more than $12,000 on the Bushmaster “long guns” in January after noticing his security officers had only handguns and were training with the sheriff’s office, which used larger guns.
The school district currently has 64 campus security staff, though only eight have handguns.
“We want to make sure they have the same tools as law enforcement,” Payne said Monday about the decision to arm the officers, according to the Denver Post. All of the officers are former law enforcement officers who will keep the rifles locked in their patrol cars and in a safe at night, he said.
“They [the rifles] will not be in the schools,” Payne asserted.
According to a report, some parents and at least one school board member had no idea about the rifles until Monday, about a month after they were purchased. Because the price tag was under $75,000, the department was able to make the purchase without school board approval.
The officers will have to go through 20 hours of training with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department and then qualify to use the rife. Five of the 10 guns could be issued within the next month.
The Douglas County School District has more than 80 schools totally roughly 67,000 students and is south of Denver. Security officers in Denver, Aurora and Jefferson County school districts carry handguns, and those in Cherry Creek are unarmed.
