We invite you to explore a solution to protect our children from a school shooting—now rather than later.
The best way to prevent school shootings is to stop the shooter from selecting your school as a target.
NotMySchool.org is not a forum for discussions about gun control or arming teachers. As the national debate continues over legislative solutions, simple practical fixes can be overlooked. Change can happen fast locally, where concerned parents, teachers, school administrators, business owners, and members of local community can kickstart a plan-of-action to protect their own schools, and become a model for others to follow.
This grassroots effort is about keeping the shooter away from your school to begin with. A uniformed off-duty police officer standing watch outside of the school with their department issued patrol rifle is the simplest way to deter a potential school shooter—it's both effective and affordable.
The same off-duty officer who would stand watch at your school is the exact person, in the exact uniform, with the exact same patrol rifle they would be using in response to a shooting at your school if they were on-duty.
But instead of arriving too late to stop mass murder, standing watch on school grounds would prevent a shooting from happening in the first place.
But our school already has lockdown drills and procedures.
Lockdown drills are an important part of a comprehensive security plan, but as evidenced by Uvalde and Sandy Hook—the 2 worst elementary school shootings in history—the lockdown procedures they had in place did NOT prevent either tragedy.
These are not school resource officers.
SRO’s have a very difficult job as it is, and protecting the school is just one of their many responsibilities. Unfortunately, SRO’s armed with a pistol are not a strong enough deterrent for school shooters. Recent school shootings have happened with SRO’s present, and SRO's have even been targeted to initiate a school shooting.
These officers would be active police officers who are currently employed.
There has been much discussion about hiring armed security officers or volunteers specifically for school security. By using POST-certified police officers who can work off-duty, you no longer deal with issues related to hiring, training and equipping new personnel.
Experts agree that the power of a rifle can overwhelm someone with a pistol.
SRO's who have been overtaken during school shootings were armed with pistols. While not everyone is comfortable seeing an officer with a rifle, the patrol rifle this officer would use is the same one they carry in their patrol car on duty at all times—and is the same rifle they would respond to a school incident with.
The officer would patrol the outside of the school and have no interaction with students.
We are familiar with the current debate over SRO's, and want to make it clear that these officers would be there for the sole purpose of protecting and defending the school. Any activity within the school that requires police involvement, outside of a serious crime or critical incident, would be handled by contacting local enforcement to respond.
Visible deterrence is key to DESELECTION as a target.
Parking a marked patrol car at the front of your school will not incur any cost to your local police agency. Since the officer will not be sitting in the patrol car or driving around the campus, there is no wear and tear or fuel costs associated with using the patrol car. If your local police department does not have a take home car policy in place, it would require a simple agency policy change to help implement this school safety plan.
Which off-duty police officers would be standing watch at the school?
These officers would be from local jurisdictions to include your county police or sheriff to ensure there are enough off-duty officers to participate in this plan. Most neighboring jurisdictions already have memorandums of understanding for mutual aid. Bottom line: Any certified law enforcement officer currently qualified with a patrol rifle, who can park a patrol car at the front of a local school.
Why can't my police department just send officers to stand guard all the time?
In the current climate of defunding the police, law enforcement agencies are over-tasked and under-staffed. By making this an opportunity for police officers to supplement their incomes with off-duty work, the burden is no longer on police departments that are already stretched thin.
“Having one police officer with a rifle at the school that prevents a school shooting from ever happening, trumps 100 police officers responding to a school shooting where mass murder has already taken place.”
—Anonymous cop
Get Involved
Donation button coming soon—please fill out the form below if you are interested in donating.
100% of all donations go directly to paying for off-duty officers to stand between our children and school shooters.
We are not a non-profit organization because 501c(3) status takes time and resources that we prefer to use towards achieving fast results.
If your 501c(3) is interested in helping us achieve our goals, please contact us to discuss how we can work together to help other school communities implement this plan.
All donations go into a single account with full transparency on where monies are spent.