Officers at California schools issued high-powered rifles

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) - The semiautomatic rifles look like they belong in a war zone instead of a suburban public school, but officials in this Los Angeles-area city say the high-powered weapons now in the hands of school police could prevent a massacre.
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 the Connecticut school shooting. Over the holiday break, the district's 14 school police officers received 40 hours of training on the rifles. Officers check them out for each shift from a fireproof safe in the police force's main office.
Fontana isn't the first district to try this. Other Southern California districts also have rifle programs - some that have been in operation for several years. Fontana school police Chief Billy Green said he used money from fingerprinting fees to purchase the guns for $14,000 after identifying a "critical vulnerability" in his force's ability to protect students. The officers, who already wear sidearms, wouldn't be able to stop a shooter like the one in Connecticut, he said Wednesday.
"They're not walking around telling kids, 'Hurry up and get to class' with a gun around their neck," the chief said. "Parents need to know that if there was a shooter on their child's campus that was equipped with body armor or a rifle, we would be limited in our ability to stop that threat to their children."
Some parents and students, however, reacted with alarm to the news that school resource officers were being issued the rifles during their shifts. The officers split their time among 44 schools in the district and keep the rifles in a safe at their assigned school or secured in their patrol car each day before checking the weapon back in to the school police headquarters each night.
Only sergeants trained for years to use the rifles are authorized to check out the rifles from the police armory, where they are kept.
Still, James Henriquez, 16, a sophomore who just enrolled at Fontana High School this week after moving from Texas, was wary.
"If the wrong person gets ahold of the gun, then we have another shooter going around with a gun. What happens then?" he asked.
Other students said they felt disillusioned that officials would spend money on semiautomatic rifles while the district eliminated its comprehensive guidance counseling program two years ago.
"They should get guns, but not as many and not spend so much money on them," said student Elizabeth Tovar. "They should use the money to get back our counselors because a lot of us really need them."
The district saved millions by restructuring guidance services, said Superintendent Cali Olsen-Binks.
The 40,000-student district came up with the school rifle program after consulting with top school safety experts and looking at what other large districts had done, said Olsen-Binks.
Santa Ana Unified School District, in nearby Orange County, has had a rifle program for about two years that operates similarly to the one Fontana has started, said police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.
The Los Angeles School Police Department also deploys rifles to its officers as needed, the department said in a statement. It would not say how many rifles district police have but said the weapons are kept in the department's armory and are handed out and returned daily.
"I came from a teaching background, and it's appalling to think that we'd have to have security officers - let alone armed police officers - on our campuses," Olsen-Binks said. "But the bottom line is ... everybody has anxiety over school safety right now."
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 the Connecticut school shooting. Over the holiday break, the district's 14 school police officers received 40 hours of training on the rifles. Officers check them out for each shift from a fireproof safe in the police force's main office.
Fontana isn't the first district to try this. Other Southern California districts also have rifle programs - some that have been in operation for several years. Fontana school police Chief Billy Green said he used money from fingerprinting fees to purchase the guns for $14,000 after identifying a "critical vulnerability" in his force's ability to protect students. The officers, who already wear sidearms, wouldn't be able to stop a shooter like the one in Connecticut, he said Wednesday.
"They're not walking around telling kids, 'Hurry up and get to class' with a gun around their neck," the chief said. "Parents need to know that if there was a shooter on their child's campus that was equipped with body armor or a rifle, we would be limited in our ability to stop that threat to their children."
Some parents and students, however, reacted with alarm to the news that school resource officers were being issued the rifles during their shifts. The officers split their time among 44 schools in the district and keep the rifles in a safe at their assigned school or secured in their patrol car each day before checking the weapon back in to the school police headquarters each night.
Only sergeants trained for years to use the rifles are authorized to check out the rifles from the police armory, where they are kept.
Still, James Henriquez, 16, a sophomore who just enrolled at Fontana High School this week after moving from Texas, was wary.
"If the wrong person gets ahold of the gun, then we have another shooter going around with a gun. What happens then?" he asked.
Other students said they felt disillusioned that officials would spend money on semiautomatic rifles while the district eliminated its comprehensive guidance counseling program two years ago.
"They should get guns, but not as many and not spend so much money on them," said student Elizabeth Tovar. "They should use the money to get back our counselors because a lot of us really need them."
The district saved millions by restructuring guidance services, said Superintendent Cali Olsen-Binks.
The 40,000-student district came up with the school rifle program after consulting with top school safety experts and looking at what other large districts had done, said Olsen-Binks.
Santa Ana Unified School District, in nearby Orange County, has had a rifle program for about two years that operates similarly to the one Fontana has started, said police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.
The Los Angeles School Police Department also deploys rifles to its officers as needed, the department said in a statement. It would not say how many rifles district police have but said the weapons are kept in the department's armory and are handed out and returned daily.
"I came from a teaching background, and it's appalling to think that we'd have to have security officers - let alone armed police officers - on our campuses," Olsen-Binks said. "But the bottom line is ... everybody has anxiety over school safety right now."
Wow... so the media actually knows the correct terms for weapons when it is being portrayed in a "positive" light with a law enforcement connection.  Had this article been about a citizen in possession of this rifle, you would have seen assault rifle at least 10 times in the article.Â
I love this post! So what the media has been calling 'Assualt Rifles' is now a High Powered rifle! Nice! Because calling it a 'duck a duck' isn't politically correct because of the implications. Ever hear about Postal workers? I hear they go "Postal" from time to time. "This is how the world ends."- South land tales.
"rifles look like they belong in a war zone instead of a suburban public school" PLEASE! Fan the flames, that's what the media does.
Wouldn't that be condisdered a low powered rifle? Last time I checked .556 is pretty mush the weakest rifle round there is. But I guess it sounds scary.......
conditioning for later in life !
So don't you see weapons like these at every foreign airport in the world except the USA?
 @FreedomRocks We don't need weapons we got the TSA.
Anyone hear about HR 226? "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a credit against tax for surrendering to authorities certain assault weapons."
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Gun confiscation is on the horizon folks!
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http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/226/text
 @portlandborn83 You're making a leap there. The chances of passage slim. Feinstein's bill does not provide apply to guns owned before the ban would take place.
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I'm not arguing that the ban is a good idea - I'm only making clear that confiscation of guns is not on the table in any of the proposed legislation.
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HR226 is a federal version of the gun buybacks you'll see from time to time on the local or state level. It contains no provision for paying law enforcement to enact any sort of confiscation - so it has no enforcement contained in it.
 @Max Quinn  @portlandborn83 Registration is just one more step towards that goal.Â
 @Max Quinn  @portlandborn83 My apologies, you are correct. In her revised proposal it no longer exists. Just reviewed them.
 @NotAChance  @portlandborn83 Where does it say registration?
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@Fed up Fed @portlandborn83Â Â Â So, Fed, do you have the ability to comment without being so mean? Seriously, what does that accomplish? This forum is supposed to be used for "clean" discussion. But that's not your M.O. You attack people and it's impossible to take you seriously.
 @Fed up Fed  @PTLD CITIZEN Because you swiftboat people's military service and then change your insult when you get your nose rubbed in it?You attempted to insult me by calling me a "Person Other than Grunt"... so... were you a grunt?
 @Fed up Fed  @portlandborn83 "hy do I get the feeling you're squatting in your own feces und"
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You huff paint? *shrug*
@Fed up Fed Where did you see the word voluntary in this document?
Why are you attacking me, do you work for DHS or big brother or something?Â
 @Fed up Fed  @gunnutz  @Playanekes  @scoreboard  @portlandborn83 I see, whats a REMF and POG. Are they insults?
 @Fed up Fed  @gunnutz  @Playanekes  @scoreboard  @portlandborn83 So what exactly is going down. I was reading and got really lost.
@Fed up Fed@TreeWizard@gunnutz@scoreboard@portlandborn83
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Oooooh. Hey, everybody. He knows a LOT of Marines.
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"Don't know if you'll bother posting it again, but I will say that every single thing in it can be found on Google excep"
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So you're telling people they can find Captain Anderson, S/Sgt Rawlings and Sgt. Johnson on a Google Search. And you called me a "POG" but, apparently you weren't actually a grunt yourself. For the record, I'm perfectly happy to have not served in combat. Neither did your President or Vice President.
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All you're trying to do is swiftboat me, and next you're going to demand to see my birth certificate or compare penises or something. I would like everybody to see just exactly what kind of person you are.
@Fed up Fed@TreeWizard@gunnutz@scoreboard@portlandborn83
I thought you told everybody I wasn't a Marine. Somebody who wasn't a Marine calling somebody a "Person Other than Grunt" is ineffective. Were you a "grunt," War Hero?
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"You weren't any kind of Marine, Playanekes. Â You should have said Air Force."
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I was never in the Air Force, knuckledragger. Nothing against them, but, you're clearly just trying to find some angle to Swiftboat my reputation.
@Fed up Fed@gunnutz@scoreboard@portlandborn83 I believe the term you liberal hippiecrit t--ts use is "Swiftboating."
That's weird, war hero. And here you're out here claiming you know my military history.I believe the term you liberal tw-ts came up with is "Swiftboating." I didn't earn any "campaign medals" and they immunized me before I was pinned. I said I knew how to field strip an M16A2 service rifle, there, Swiftboat. They don't issue AR-15s and if they do, they didn't at the Marine Corps Development and Education Command Center (before they renamed it MCCDC) which was the last place I was expected to regurgitate the nomenclature or recite the chamber pressure (52,000 PSI) as the bolt moves past the gas tube.Â
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MOS changed to 4300 but that's screwball because I wasn't a "combat" reporter--there being no combat in 1988 and 1989, so instead I wrote collegiate recruiting propaganda and covered regional events for the press pool. Having graduated from OCS in July, 1988, and diagnosed with less-than-perfect vision, I was being groomed for 0602 when the Gramm Rudman act passed and 50% of us had to go one way or the other. Mostly because the Honorable Dick  ...Cheney... wanted his toy MX missile train.My commandants were General A.M. Gray and General Anderson, Secretary of the Navy was C.W. Trost, The Honorable Dick was Secretary of Defense, and Ronald Reagan was Commander in Chief. Can't remember the base commander's name but my Company CO was also Captain Anderson, Top was some new guy, the Platoon Sgt was S/Sgt L. Rawlings and my immediate sergeant was a mortar-plate carrier named Sgt. Johnson. I believe his previous MOS was 0800, which is NOT "infantry."
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I'm not going to tell you what's on my DD-214 because you claim to know who I am, so, that's YOURS to share, there, swiftboater.Now why don't you tell us some war stories about dodging bullets. They were probably all outbound, and pulling targets at the rifle range doesn't count.
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 @TreeWizard  @gunnutz  @scoreboard  @portlandborn83 Ask Fed. He claims to know me.
@Playanekes @gunnutz @Fed @scoreboard @portlandborn83Â
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 Hold on play,  I haven't cued up "America the Beautiful" yet, let alone lowered the huge american flag as your backdrop
 @Fed up Fed  @NotAChance  @portlandborn83 Ya and Obama one two terms with it...
 @Fed up Fed  @portlandborn83 Got that from watching Chris Matthews on MSNBS I assume?
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Newt Gingrich:Â The Founding Fathers of America are the source from which we draw our understanding of America. He draws his from Saul Alinsky... It fits the model of Alinsky radicalism... A Saul Alinsky radical who is incompetent cannot be reelected... Nobody has ever gone back and asked what Saul Alinsky stands for, nobody ever asked what neighborhood organizer meant.Â
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âWe need somebody who is a conservative and who can stand up to him and debate and who can clearly draw the contrast between the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Saul Alinsky,â Gingrich told a large crowd outside the Wings Plus restaurant in Coral Springs, Florida Wednesday.
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So, either you're a liar, OR you really cannot comprend the world around you.Â
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And Hardball? Really?
 @Playanekes  @gunnutz  @scoreboard  @portlandborn83 I am curious as to what it says.
 @gunnutz  @Playanekes  @Fed  @scoreboard  @portlandborn83 I keep challenging you tw-ts to print my name and quote what it says on my DD 214.  Keep squawking because I want to everybody to see just exactly what you are.
 @Fed up Fed  @scoreboard  @portlandborn83 What would everybody do without you , War Hero?I mean besides accidentally ban the police weapons in New York, or ban the assault weapons they're simultaneously putting in schools in California?  'Cause they don't need your help for that, do they? Just that's how you anti-gun Nazis roll.Â
 @portlandborn83  @Fed Its the only way he (it) can debate, by utilizing the time-honored rules imposed by Saul Alinsky:Â
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 Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
 @portlandborn83  @Fed He attacks anyone that has a different opinion than him.
"Other students said they felt disillusioned that officials would spend money on semiautomatic rifles while the district eliminated its comprehensive guidance counseling program two years ago."
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We cannot help you get through school, but if you step out of line we'll kill you. Nice message the district is sending.
Sadly, kids don't understand budgets. A one time security expense of $14,000 isn't anything like the expense of hiring a full time counselor.
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 @gunnutz Hey, guess who found a use for big-bad scary looking AR-15, hippie?CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS.  HAHAHAAAA!!!
 @gunnutz That was rude.
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 @Fed up Fed  @gunnutz Your welcome. =)
The head line is wrong!
AR15 rifles are not high powered rifles!
They were designed for battle field conditions and are a cross between a pistol cartridge and a rifle cartridge. A high powered rifle would be like a rifle used to hunt deer or elk. Hunting rifles have at least 4 times, some as much as 8 times, as much power as an AR15.
But then we all know how the news media stretches the truth, distorts the truth, or just plain lies for the sensationalism.
It has gotten to the point where you just can't trust anything that you hear form them.
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 @gunnutz  @Freedom1267 In other words, your crackpot opinion has been marginalized and Feinstein has been outed as a gun-toting hypocrite.No s--t, right? Sucks to be you, I guess, 'cause a new Rush song for California could go:THE TEACHER, AND THE LAWMAN
EACH SHALL DO HIS PART
TO HOLD THEIR NEW AR-15
CLOSER TO THE HEART. YEAH...
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 @Fed up Fed  @Freedom1267   Hey, everybody, look who's sourcing the NRA now!  Bwaahaaa!
 @Fed up Fed  @Playanekes  @Freedom1267 I know, that's why I am not in the NRA (like what they do, don't agree with things they say).I guess I should join and become new President?
 @Fed up Fed  @Playanekes  @Freedom1267 Sure, I see your point. I wouldn't call a 5.7x28 high powered. You are correct on the Velocity; however, intermediate cartridges like the 5.56 are significantly lower in energy. Personally, I'd see the energy dictating more whether or not its high powered.  Â
 @Fed up Fed  @Playanekes  @Freedom1267 Most of the rifles involved in the "high powered rifle" category are all actual high powered rifles except for the AR-15s, so inaccurate name, should be called Military Rifle Competition or something.Â
 @Fed up Fed  @Freedom1267 "Who should I source to make you listen?  Diane Feinstein?"
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Diane Feinstein (D), California.  Banning "military-style assault weapons" while carrying one, and while equipping security guards in California schools with the same weapons she says are only used to commit mass murder.Quote her all you want, socialist. It's good to illustrate how big of hypocrites you people are.Â
 @Fed up Fed  @Freedom1267 Doubling down, are we POS?
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You're like that stank that you just can't get out of the carpet.