School security: Tacoma officers need to be armed

Re: “Students return to armed guards and lockdowns,” (TNT, 8/12).

This article reports on the arming of school patrol security officers in various school districts in several states.

Last March, the TNT reported Tacoma School District required its school patrol security officers to turn in their firearms. The article noted: “District officials say that if someone has to draw a gun at a school, they want it to be a Tacoma police officer.”

From June 1998 to December 2005, as director of risk management for the district, I was the patrol security officers’ supervisor.

The officers had three basic functions: patrolling schools at night and on weekends, responding to alarms and checking the security of buildings.

The patrol officer working the school day responded to calls from elementary and middle schools that did not have police officers at the schools.

I rode with the patrol officers regularly and at night. Removing their firearms, for which they were trained to use at a reserve police academy and at the Tacoma Police Department firing range, leaves them unable to defend themselves and protect others when encountering an armed intruder in the dead of night.

The decision to remove firearms is an egregious error.