In rural Georgia, school administrators are encouraging teachers and other school employees to arm themselves. With schools spread far and wide in the sparsely populated county of Laurens, it could take a long time for police to engage an intruder at the schools. Those minutes could equate to many lives. School personnel are being asked to be the first responders to any threat. Arlinda Smith Broady writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Laurens is a rural county with a population of less than 50,000, with about 25 percent of those under 18. The spread of the county — its 807 square miles make it the third largest in the state — demonstrate a safety safety issue for it’s two high schools, two middle schools and four elementary schools.
It’s no secret that it can take more than half an hour to get from one of the high schools to the other, so emergency response times are an issue. The school doesn’t have school resource officers. It shares the cost of rotating Laurens County deputies among schools, but the officers also help police the rest of the county.
“Look at the shootings that have taken the most lives,” Brigman said. “The shooter was done in about 10 minutes.”
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