US

Report: Tough Gun Laws Did Not Improve Los Angeles School Safety

SHUTTERSTOCK/ via user Africa Studio

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Neetu Arnold Contributor
Font Size:
  • Los Angeles schools were not meeting adequate safety measures despite having tough gun laws
  • A task force by Democrat and L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer came up with 33 recommendations to meet safety measures
  • One recommendation was reducing daily metal detections to 10 days per month for a limited number of schools

A Blue Ribbon Panel on School Safety, organized by Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, cautioned that Los Angeles schools may not be meeting adequate safety measures, even though the city and state of California has tough gun laws, according to a report released Monday.

The panel was concerned that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) struggled to meet safety measures due to not receiving enough funds to provide quality mental health services to students. California ranked the lowest in the amount of spending put toward each student, according to the report.

Other problems pointed out in the report included inconsistent school safety measures and inefficient collaboration between schools and public organizations.

The panel came up with 33 recommendations after holding several town hall meetings between April and June.

One recommendation was having single, secure entrances for each school as over 200 schools did not have secure and controllable entrances, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Another recommendation was not only hiring more mental health professionals, but also requiring schools to enforce social-emotional and pro-social programs for K-12 students. Twenty-six percent of the 8,000 students screened were at high risk for traumatic stress, the report found.

The panel also wanted LAUSD to require parents to sign standardized documents confirming they were safely storing guns at the start of the school year. Additionally, some panelists wanted to use “firearm tracing data and social-network analysis to monitor high-risk individuals,” in communities closest to schools to not have access to firearms, though some disagreed with this initiative, according to the report.

Random metal detection searches in the schools were also highly divisive with some believing the action was “dehumanizing” and “students of color were disproportionately searched,” while others felt the metal detecting services discouraged students from bringing weapons into schools, according to the report. The search policy was effective in deterring students from bringing in weapons, but did not help with the actual confiscation.

“Most often, weapons were recovered not through random searches, but when students came forward to present information to adults on campus,” the report said.

The school district plans to pilot a program in the fall, which would decrease daily random metal detection searches to 10 days per month for a limited number of schools.

The report was issued by a 21-member panel, who was gathered after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida during February. Panelist qualifications included members and students of the LAUSD, law enforcement, business community representatives, social and mental health workers and activists who worked with groups like the LGBTQ community.

President Donald Trump encouraged school members to be trained and armed after the Parkland shooting, however, Feuer was not a big fan of the idea. (RELATED: Virginia Government Officials Not Happy With First School District To Arm Teachers)

“There are too many guns too easily accessible to the wrong people,” Feuer said, according to the L.A. Times on March 5. “A teacher’s mission in life is to instruct rather than to fire weapons in a classroom.”

Feuer is seeking help from the private sector and government agencies to make ends meet financially for the recommendations.

LAUSD school board members passed a resolution for enforcing stricter gun laws along with school safety measures, according to the LA School Report on March 13.

California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, according to the resolution.

Follow Neetu on Twitter

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel