The fear that has been generated by school shootings in the US has prompted some districts to adopt measures that seem utterly wrongheaded. An elementary school in Indiana ran a drill to prepare for school shootings that involved teachers getting fired at with plastic pellets.
The incident, acknowledged in testimony this week before state lawmakers, was confirmed by two elementary school teachers in Monticello, who described an exercise in which teachers were asked by local law enforcement to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across their backs with plastic pellets without warning.
“They told us, ‘This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing,’” said one of the two teachers, both of whom asked IndyStar not to be identified out of concern for their jobs. “They shot all of us across our backs. I was hit four times.
“It hurt so bad.”
…One of the teachers said she was waiting in the library with her colleagues as the first small group of teachers was led into a classroom for one session.
…She said she had welts and one spot where the pellet broke her skin. It was scabbed over for several weeks.
What exactly was the lesson being sent by shooting at teachers? That bullets hurt? I think that everyone already knows that. If at all, shooting them with pellets might convey the wrong message that bullets are not lethal.
People go into the teaching profession to teach, not to be police deputies or the targets of a shooting exercise. I find it incredible that school districts agree to this type of ‘training’.
In New Zealand, the government bans weapons days after a mass shooting. In the US, the police shoots teachers with plastics bullets. That makes sense…
Well, it gave the cops a chance to prove that they are sadistic, authoritarian assholes who like to exert power over people that can’t fight back. It also proves that the school administrators are clueless gits who should be fired and never able to hold an administrative position again EVER.
Indiana teachers union head goes on CNN and begs cops ‘please stop shooting us’
Can’t help wishing one of those teachers had been in a position to simply turn around and shoot back.