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The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office wants to store long rifles at Niwot High School and Lyons Middle Senior High School as a preventative measure against school shootings.
At the St. Vrain Valley School District Board of Education workshop on Wednesday, law enforcement, school resources officers, board members and district officials discussed the sheriff’s office proposal. As it was a workshop, no official decisions were made, but the school board expressed openness to the idea.
Sgt. Bill Crist with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office laid out the reasoning behind the proposal: Lyons and Niwot sit as “islands” where longer law enforcement response times present a safety concern. He explained that when it comes to mass shootings, the incident happens quickly and a five minute delay in back up for the high school’s resource officers would be too late.
“The simple fact is that we are asking for a tool to be placed into the schools that we may or may not have to use — and we pray every night that we never have to use,” he said. “But it’s a tool.”
Crist explained that the pistols that officers carry are not effective in the long hallways present at the two schools. He emphasized the importance of having the right tool to address whatever situation might arise, which might include a rifle in a school shooter emergency.
School resource officers do store a rifle in their cars, but if a threat were to enter a school building that would likely be too far away to be of any help.
“If you look at the three last major (shootings) in schools, Sandy Hook, Parkland and Uvlade, the threat came from outside,” said Eric Underwood, the school resource officer at Niwot High. “It was a non-student, adult that entered the building … If this person’s bringing materials that we see are going to be used to harm others, we have that opportunity to engage with that suspect with our tool that’s in our office in that situation.”
Crist acknowledged that, as the rifle would be stored in a specific part of the school building, it might not be useful in every situation, but emphasized the importance of having it as an option.
Law enforcement and district officials who spoke about the proposal emphasized that adding the rifles would be one of several layers to provide school safety.
Superintendent Don Haddad spoke to the various other projects St. Vrain has taken on to improve school safety, from investing in more mental health resources for students, adjusting school layouts, increasing security measures and providing training for teachers and staff.
“There is no job, no issue that is more important to me — and I know this is true with every staff member here — than the safety of our folks,” Haddad said. “I will always be committed to putting up as many barriers (between students and threats) as humanly possible, and that’s from every angle.”
Storing long rifles at schools would be a new undertaking at St. Vrain, but they are already in place at several Front Range districts. There is also a growing call to have this type of weapon accessible to school resource officers across the nation in response to the Uvalde tragedy.
The board asked if there was interest in implementing this at every school. Crist emphasized that he believed district-wide implementation would be a good thing, but acknowledged that he understood if the board would prefer to start with just two schools.
Haddad specified that he would prefer that proposals for any similar setups come from the law enforcement agency of that jurisdiction. Longmont School Resource Officer Sgt. John Garcia added that, along with his support for the sheriff’s office proposal, bringing long rifle storage to any schools in Longmont would take some logistics to work through first.
Haddad outlined some of those logistics at Niwot High and Lyons Middle Senior, outlining where and how the rifle would be stored. He said it would be in a biometric safe within a secured room with no windows, multiple locking mechanisms, an alarm and impenetrable ceilings to ensure only law enforcement could access it.
Crist mentioned that the rifle would likely be transported from the resource officer’s car in the morning and back in the evening, rather than keeping one there constantly.
District officials and law enforcement repeatedly emphasized the top priority of student, staff and teacher safety in this proposal. No decision was made Wednesday night, but discussions will continue.
“It sounds to me like common sense that highly trained professional law enforcement officers in the schools should be equipped with the resources to match any threat they could potentially face,” Board President Karen Ragland said.
