Baltimore City School Board Reconsidering Arming Resource Officers
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Two weeks after a felon shot a basketball coach inside of a west Baltimore high school, the clash over school security will go to the school board, again.
Baltimore's school board will reconsider arming school resource officers during school hours one month after unanimously voting no on the measure, and two weeks after a felon walked into Frederick Douglass High School and shot a school employee twice.
In a press conference last week, assistant basketball coach Michael Marks, alongside his attorney, said that there was nothing to prevent 25-year-old Neil Davis from entering the west Baltimore school and carrying out his plan to kill a staffer.
"I'm struggling in the morning and struggling at night," Marks said.
While Marks saw him pacing in the lobby, and tried to fight him off, he and his attorney said that unarmed resource officers ran away.
"As a result of it, my client took two bullets for Baltimore City Public Schools," J Wyndal Gordon, Marks' attorney, said.
Baltimore Schools CEO Sonja Santelises spoke to WJZ days after the shooting.
"More of our focus has been on, what were the vulnerabilities we did not see, because by and large as of now, the protocols were generally followed," Santelises said.
Under those existing protocols, officers' weapons go under lock and key before the first bell.
Union leaders for both school police and school administrators said that the shooting at Douglass is proof that those tasked with guarding students and teachers should be allowed to carry their weapons at all hours.
"If in fact they don't reverse their decision, and something occurs in one of our schools in Baltimore, such as violence toward a principal, a vice principal, a teacher or a student, I am going to hold them fully responsible, and I will bring the wrath down on them," Jimmy Gittings, a City School Admin, said. "This has to stop."
Soon, only votes will tell if the school board agrees.
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