SALON

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013 8:30 PM UTC

Fontana, Calif., schools get high-powered rifles

By

Topics: From the Wires,

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) — The school police force in this Southern California city has acquired 14 high-powered semiautomatic rifles for officers to bring to campuses.

Fontana Unified School District police purchased 14 of the Colt LE6940 rifles last fall, and they were delivered the first week of December, a week before a gunman killed 26 children and students at a Connecticut elementary school.

“I think it just further solidified the need to give our officers the tools they need to respond to an active shooter on campus,” schools Police Chief Billy Green said Wednesday about the tragedy.

“If someone were to come onto one of our school campuses and kill our students … and they were wearing body armor or were equipped with a rifle, our officers were not properly equipped to respond to the danger,” Green said.

The rifles were purchased to address a “critical vulnerability,” although there has never been such an attack at any of the 45 Fontana campuses, the chief said. The 14 officers currently carry handguns, according to police officials.

The weapons, which cost $1,000 each, are high-powered weapons that are accurate at longer range and can pierce body armor.

The guns are stored in a fireproof safe at school police headquarters. Officers who have received 40 hours of training in their use can check them out and keep them in locked safes at high school and middle school police offices during school hours before returning them, Green said.

“They’re not walking around telling kids, ‘Hurry up and get to class’ with a gun around their neck,” the chief said.

The guns did not require approval from the school board but member Leticia Garcia said she will ask the board to discuss the issue.

There should have been a public discussion before they were purchased, Garcia said.

“Those rifles have ricocheting ammunition … they can go right through people,” Garcia said. “We’re talking about a war-zone rifle, and so are we going to militarize our public schools? We have to provide a safe haven for people to learn … but this, to me, seems a little bit too much.”

The weapons are an uncomfortable but necessary evil, said BarBara L. Chavez, the board’s vice president

“In my world, everything should be peaceful, we shouldn’t hate each other,” said the mother of five. “However, that’s not the world we’re living in. We’re living in a violent world, crazies are out there constantly…. We need to be prepared.”

Fontana is a city of 200,000 about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

___

AP reporter Robert Jablon contributed to this report.

More By Gillian Flaccus.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
142 points143 points | 4 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
120 points121 points | 22 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
56 points57 points | 14 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
42 points43 points | 4 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
44 points45 points | 20 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations